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Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 
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Schleiermacher's soliloquies 


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SCHLEIERMACHER'S 
SOLILOQUIES 


AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION 
OF 
THE MONOLOGEN 


WITH A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION 
AND APPENDIX 


BY. 
HORACE LELAND FRIESS 


Boos AN ne So ROM PELE OSO PE Y 
IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 





CHICAGO 
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 
1926 


COPYRIGHT BY 
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 
1926 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


TO 
FELIX ADLER 


IN GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE 
APPRECIATION 


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PREFACE 


SCHLEIERMACHER’S Soliloquies (Monologen) were 
written a few months after the Speeches on Religion, 
his best known work, and the two supplement each 
other. In Germany the Soliloquies have been, like 
Fichte’s Vocation of Man which bears the same date, 


one of the few original expressions of philosophic 
idealism to become_a popular classic. The text ap- 


peared in four editions during Schleiermacher’s life, 
in 1800, 1810, 1822, and 1829. Thereafter it was re- 
published in 1836, in 1843, 1846, 1848, 1853, 1860, in 
1866 by two different publishers, again in 1869, and 
in 1870. Since then it has been incorporated as a Ger- 
man classic in various libraries such as Reclams Um- 
versalbibliothek and Hendels Bibliothek der Gesamt- 
literatur also in Meyers Volksbiicher. In 1902 Fried- 
rich Michael Schiele of Marburg University published 
a critical edition, which has been several times re- 
printed, and is by far the most useful edition for schol- 
ars. This is the edition used in making the present 
translation. A French translation was printed in 1837 
and republished in 1864, but until now no English 
translation has appeared. 

In making his critical edition Schiele used the origi- 
nal version of 1800 for the main body of his text, and 
I have followed him in this respect. In footnotes he 
put the numerous changes made by Schleiermacher in 
the second and third editions, 1810 and 1822 respec- 


v1 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


tively. The greater number of these changes are 
purely stylistic, but there are some important revisions 
of the thought also. I have not translated those foot- 
notes of Schiele’s which contain the purely stylistic 
changes, since these can be of interest only to a reader 
of German, but I have included in notes of my own all 
the material changes. (See pp. 104-112.) 

Most of the English literature on Schleiermacher 
has been concerned primarily with his work as a theo- 
logian. The philosophical current underlying this 
work has scarcely been tapped. In my Introduction 
I have tried to characterize the romantic spirituality 
of the Soliloquies, to show its origins in the growth 
of our culture and its relations to modern religious 
currents. This theme seems to me to be the most sig- 
nificant one in the first half of Schleiermacher’s life, 
that is from 1768-1800. 

The second half of his life, from 1800-1834, is an- 
other story, and one that I have not attempted to tell on 
the same scale, partly because it is so different a story 
as to require another book, and still more because the 
materials for it have not yet been adequately sifted 
by those who know the sources to make its general 
significance accessible. The materials themselves, i. e., 
the systematic philosophical works of Schleiermacher’s 
later years, in the present state of their editing and 
interpretation are of interest to the special student 
only. For the use of such special students, who can 
not read German, I have added an appendix, giving a 
brief account of the dialectical development of Schlei- 
ermacher’s philosophy, especially in his later years. 
(See pp. 113ff.) 


PREFACE vil 


Professor John J. Coss of Columbia University, 
who first suggested to me that a translation of the 
Monologen would be desirable, has faithfully spon- 
sored the project with constructive suggestions 
throughout. In the course of my work I have also 
come into closer touch with the thought of three teach- 
ers, John Dewey, F. J. E. Woodbridge, and Felix 
Adler, to whom I am indebted for fundamental ideas 
of great value, not only for my immediate purpose, 
but far beyond it. Dr. Adler has taken an especially 
helpful interest in the translation. My friends, James 
Gutmann and J. H. Randall, Jr., have given no end 
of encouragement and help to the last detail. Finally, 
I wish to acknowledge some special points of advice 
and criticism given by Professor J. Bauer of Heidel- 
berg and Dr. A. C. McGiffert of Union Theological 
Seminary. To each and all of these I extend warm 
thanks. 

Horace L. FRIigss. 

CoLtumBiIA UNIversiTy, May, 1926. 






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TABLE OF CONTENTS 


MALE OUILICLIOL amcitcs Fie rcteiate cit etches seared aoa Wes xi 
Beibetetmacner Ss) UlOdIHeSH ah itceisca vate alae I 
iRecE EES Gm (0 Tek By heegate Nllieagh ile, eh tyt, A LARaie Oht O F e R 10 
SUEUR NTA Tay 0 Bis Ee 2 ah Re 9 PR 26 
TOM OTIC ie Pree eer eee ae ey gt ee 49 
PRES CCUM ses avelipen, Coreetse tek TOM als te a Mienecerats as 69 
VOLTA AY PW ove ea GA ase aA cain 89 
Schleiermacher’s revisions of the text .......... 104 
OME Gre OOTES | 5) SRS Taian Sera Aiea nae ete ee ae ae 115 


{. The development of Schleiermacher’s philo- 
BRAC GS VSTEIU Bilas ee ctute iy cutee ntuudel ness 115 


II. Schleiermacher’s conception of a philoso- 
Retr TIOR aoe Arie Me R dh Uns ta te aN m2 149 


PERU MESOOTA DIY, ts cies < cid ol sine) eeieieigie wath wie 167 


eas a ipa ie | 
1s a ae pink 





INTRODUCTION 


HE impulse to make open confession, to reveal 

the counsels of the heart, or to write spiritual 
autobiography seems particularly strong in religious 
souls, and has in all times and places left an intimate 
record of religious experience. Schleiermacher’s 
Soliloquies (Monologen) is a record of this type, 
although it contains nothing, as its author says, of 
religion in a strict and narrow sense.’ It is an inner 
conversation, a series of meditations, a book of self- 
scrutiny. It is one of the very few writings in the 
literature of German philosophic idealism, which im- 
parts experiences and beliefs directly instead of 
through a medium of speculation and dialectic. It 
supplements the argued apology for religion, with 
which Schleiermacher’s name is pre-eminently associ- 
ated, by a more immediate revelation of his own dis- 
tinctive spirituality. There is no more immediate and 
representative a revelation than the Soliloquies of 
that peculiar speculative and romantic idealism which 
has so thoroughly permeated German thought from 
1800 to the very present. The chief fruits of Schleier- 
macher’s life are no doubt to be found in his works 
on religion, especially in his noted book On Religion: 
Speeches addressed to its cultured despisers (1799), 
but what his life was in its spiritual essence, when he 

1See below pp. 6. 


Xii SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


wrote this evangel of modernist Protestantism—and 
thereby much of the meaning of what he said—is more 
purely revealed in the Soliloquies of a year later.? 
The history of Schleiermacher’s family is linked 
with three distinct episodes in the development of lib- 
eral Protestantism, each of which has produced a 
characteristic strain of thought and feeling in pursuit 
of a characteristic kind of liberation. The first strain 
is that common initially to the Quakers and Pietists, 
then to Wesleyanism, and evangelicalism generally. It 
is essentially bent on inner moral regeneration, often 
strongly tinged with elements of mystical exaltation. 
It is supernaturalistic at first hand or by original con- 
viction. Its liberalism consists in its freedom from 
ecclesiastical forms, and its reliance upon the individ- 
ual’s experience. It was evoked essentially by the 
ecclesiastical formalism of the seventeenth century, 
by sectarian strife and those last fearful struggles over 
the dead body of mediaeval Christendom, that raged 
in Central Europe from 1618 to 1648. Above the 
degradation and turmoil of those years there came 
once more to certain sensitive souls a pure vision of 
Christ, still beckoning to all men as a companion in 
a simple but adequate brotherhood of charity. For 
these idealists the immediate communion with Christ 
was the supreme reality of life. One might walk and 
talk with Him in the fields around Bristol or in the 
2Cf. p. 99 below and note *. When citing the German 


text of the Monologen I shall refer to the critical edition by 


Ea Schiele and designate it Schiele. See Bibliography, p. 


3 In Catholic Christianity, in Judaism, in all western religion 
there have been analogous movements, but I shall confine my- 
self to Protestantism within which Schleiermacher’s influence 
has been immediate and decisive. 


INTRODUCTION Xill 


Rhineland, as every Pietist and Methodist hymn-book 
testifies. 

The same century that produced the founders of 
evangelicalism witnessed the impressive discovery of 
the Newtonian system of nature. As the fact of 
natural law gradually permeated the minds of people, 
a new and very different type of liberal Protestantism 
developed. Its aim was to free the religious tradition 
of elements which might impede the development of 
natural knowledge. It sought to eliminate extrava- 
gant supernaturalism, and to grasp “the analogy of 
religion to the constitution and order of nature.” Its 
liberalism was that of freedom from superstition, of 
encouraging solid thought in the furtherance of human 
welfare. 

For a time this humanitarian program of eighteenth 
century rationalism seemed to advance along simple 
lines. But gradually with the accumulation of knowl- 
edge and power, the constitution and order of nature 
were seen to be more complicated than hitherto sup- 
posed, and the elements of human welfare to be more 
varied. The nineteenth century produced a bewilder- 
ing variety both of theoretical and of practical per- 
spectives. It would be hard to say where the choice 
of reason is most difficult: whether in the field of 
metaphysics, beset as it is, on the side of natural phil- 
osophy, with the problems of interpreting evolution 
and relativity (not to mention the claim of metaphysi- 
cal idealism to supplant all naturalism), or in the field 
of competing economic interests, or yet again in the 
realm of contrary cultural ideals. This new situation 
has given rise to another form of religious liberalism, 
namely modernism. The liberalism of the modernist 


Xvi SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


enced much, that is, much of evil on my part and much 
of grace on the part of heaven. On my part, I have 
deserved wrath! But the Lamb of the Cross cries to 
me: ‘I have atoned for thee!’?”® The experience of 
grace, however, did not develop as it should. And 
Schleiermacher had in its place imaginative moments, 
in which he wondered whether all the legend of Chris- 
tianity, as well as all the stories he had been told of 
ancient history, were not purely fanciful. 

These random doubts of childhood were in time sup- 
pressed, but only by the satisfaction of a growing criti- 
cal faculty—not by acquiescence in tradition, but by 
the getting of new knowledge. There was a fellow- 
student in the school at Niesky named Albertini, and 
a teacher, named Hilmer, who aroused in Schleier- 
macher a greater passion for learning, in particular for 
classical literature, than the place could satisfy. 
The Moravian system showed a shrewd appreciation 
of worldly commonsense, but the uncommon achieve- 
ments of worldly-minded genius, like natural science 
and classical literature, it generally neglected. Its 
deepest vein was other-worldly, and it found greater 
value in spontaneous inner lights, in dreams and un- 
expected revelations of the supernatural, than in learn- 
ing. At the Moravian seminary in Barby, to which he 
was promoted after two years, Schleiermacher felt 
the limitations of Moravianism more sharply than at 
the school. No attention was paid to the renaissance 
in letters, in scholarship, and in philosophy that was 
even then raising the German mind to its highest spir- 
itual achievements. There was an index of forbidden 


® Letters, v. 1, pp. 1-45, quotation from p. 38. See also Dil- 
they, pp. 12-21; N. E. 13-28 for these school-days. 


INTRODUCTION XVvii 


literature, both ancient and modern. Schleiermacher 
found some congenial fellow-spirits among the stu- 
dents with whom he formed his first real friendships, 
and together they smuggled some of the condemned 
books into the school, among them Wieland’s poems 
and Goethe’s Werther. Their friendship, formed un- 
der the golden spell of Greek naturalism and modern 
poetry, took on an ideal significance. They regarded 
themselves as harbingers of a better era for humanity, 
working in secret.’ But relations with the authorities 
of the seminary became more and more unbearable. 
The great University of Halle, only a few miles 
away, was under these circumstances an irresistible 
temptation. In 1787, after two years in the seminary, 
Schleiermacher made the final decision to break away 
from the Moravian Brotherhood, and wrote to his 
father for permission to study at Halle. His father 
was deeply grieved, and for a time irate, but finally 
he gave his full consent. In these letters to his father 
Schleiermacher put certain theological doubts in the 
foreground as reasons for his break with the Mora- 
vians, questioning especially their naively supernatural 
Christology.’ This was an issue which his father and 
his father’s generation, given to rationalism and deism, 
would understand and would regard as crucial. But 
for Schleiermacher himself it was only half the story. 
A new world of esthetic feeling, of historic research, 
of social relations was opening to his imagination and 
to that of his young companions, a world unknown to 
the eighteenth century. Toward this world of the 


7 Cf. the later expression of this feeling among the romanti- 
cists. See below pp. 61ff. 

8 Letters, v. 1, pp. 46-67ff. contains this significant series of 
letters between Schleiermacher and his father. 


XVili SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


future Schleiermacher went when he left the Mora- 
vians. 

But he took with him a permanent heritage of his 
early training. The four years spent in the Moravian 
Brotherhood not only associated his life and his ideals 
inseparably with Christian religion, but also deter- 
mined in great measure the form that Christianity, 
and religion as a whole, thereafter took in his mind. 
Among the Moravians he had experienced conversion, 
redemption, regeneration, and other-worldliness as 
emotional facts, and these experiences remained a part 
of himself, though he left the cult and its theology. 
(“Religion remained with me,” he wrote later, “when 
God and immortality vanished before my doubting 
eyes.”®) The deep humility of the Moravians, 
their utter trust in Providence, left in him a perma- 
nent quality of reverence, a basic tranquility and re- 
pose, and holiness of spirit.1° He was likewise imbued 
with the personalism, the moral earnestness of brother 
in dealing with brother. These positive qualities of 
Moravian piety were firmly grounded in Schleier- 
macher, and remained in him as a permanent spiritual 
deposit conditioning his whole subsequent growth. 

When he went to Halle, he enrolled as a theological 
student, thus continuing, despite his break with the 
Moravians, in the clerical traditions of his family. He 

®°Uber die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren 
Verichtern (1st ed., republished by R. Otto, Gottingen, 1920), 
p. 10. Hereafter I cite this edition as Reden, and the English 
translation by John Oman, London, 1894, as On Religion. This 
English translation is of Schleiermacher’s revised text, and 
contains interesting variations. For example, the passage quoted 
above reads: “When the God and immortality of my childhood 
vanished from my doubting eyes, piety remained to me.’ See 


p. 9, also pp. 275-284, of Oman’s translation. 
10 Cf. below p. 154. 


INTRODUCTION X1X 


says he could imagine no means but preaching for 
exerting the particular didactic influence upon the 
spirit of the common man, that seemed a part of his 
nature.* And so he clung to the plan of preaching 
throughout many years of groping. All through his 
university days, however, and for years afterward, 
even though he had begun to preach, he could find lit- 
tle joy in “theological rubbish.”!* His favorite studies 
were those in ancient literature and in philosophy. 
At Halle he was fortunate to have teachers of an abil- 
ity commensurate with his ambition in these subjects, 
F. A. Wolf, one of the founders of modern classical 
scholarship, and E. A. Eberhard, who emphasized the 
continuity of modern philosophical thought with the 
Greek tradition and criticized the Kantian revolution. 
Eberhard set Schleiermacher to work translating Aris- 
totle’s Ethics.* The discipline of original research 
under the guidance of these men gave him a critical 
sense for fact and a training in exact, systematic 
thought. 

The scientific tradition to which Schleiermacher was 
introduced at Halle was predominantly rationalistic. 
Science was conceived as a development of proposi- 
tions tested by their relations to each other. Experi- 
ence was taken into account by the recognition that 
the material for the formulation of propositions is fur- 
nished by experience and by the expectation that falsi- 
fications of experience will reveal themselves in the 
form of conflicting propositions. In this form of 
rationalism the antithesis between logic and experi- 


11 Letters, v. 1, p. 177. 
12 Briefe, v. 4, p. 42. 
SVE below p. 117, note 5. Cf. Dilthey, pp. 28-36; N. E. 


xx SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


ence, which has furnished such a dilemma for the the- 
ory of knowledge, is somewhat mitigated. The net- 
work of propositions that constitute science is re- 
garded as a network in which experience (and thereby 
the stuff of the world) is caught up. Schleiermacher 
was brought up in this view of science as an ordered 
whole, and he never abandoned it, even though he 
became clearly conscious of difficulties involved in it. 
He saw that, according to this view, the certainty of 
specific propositions depends on their relations to the 
whole body of truth; the fact that we do not know 
this whole tends to infect all our knowledge with un- 
certainty and to make our rationalistic systems some- 
what inadequate and artificial. We are forced to be 
experimental, sceptical, and intuitive, in the interest 
of the fullness of life and being that lies beyond our 
organized thought. Instead of taking these freer 
activities into his conception of science, however, 
Schleiermacher prefers to think of them as belonging 
to the highly important, non-scientific side of life. The 
ideal of science itself is to be purely rational, and in 
his formal, scientific works of later years he shows an 
arduous loyalty to this ideal by casting all his demon- 
strations into a rigid, systematic form.1* The ration- 
alistic ideal of science is maintained as expressing an 
unattainable perfection of one of man’s eternal inter- 
ests. But since it is clearly recognized to be both an 
unattainable and a one-sided interest, there appears in 
Schleiermacher’s philosophy a certain antithesis or 


14 Cf. below pp. 132ff. in connection with above discussion, 
and also the collected edition of Schleiermacher’s works, part 
IIT, vol. 5, pp. 3-8, 24-25, and part III, vol. 4°, pp. 144£f. Here- 
after I shall refer to this edition as Werke, and use numerals 
I, II, and III to designate the theological, homiletic, and philo- 
sophical divisions respectively. See Bibliography, p. 167 below. 


INTRODUCTION xxi 


tension, very characteristic and fundamental in all 
German thought of recent times, between the supposed 
claims of order and system, on the one hand and the 
supposed claims of life and being, on the other. Cer- 
tain underlying motives and causes of this very char- 
acteristic antithesis will appear in further tracing 
Schleiermacher’s development. 

The interest of his teachers at Halle and of their 
better pupils in Greek thought marks a turning point 
in the development of modern philosophy. After a 
period of comparative neglect, a revival of classical 
studies made its appearance in the eighteenth century, 
which brought Schleiermacher and many of his con- 
temporaries under its spell. In the same years that 
he was translating Aristotle at Halle, Friedrich Schle- 
gel was studying Greek poetry at Leipzig and Dresden, 
Schelling Greek mythology at Tubingen, and Hegel 
Greek religion in Tubingen and Basel. (That these 
early studies of the German philosophers were not 
merely school-boy exercises will scarcely be questioned, 
yet it is interesting to quote from a letter of Hegel’s 
which shows plainly what was really at stake in them. 
Congratulating J. C. Voss on his translation of Homer’s 
Odyssey, Hegel writes: “Luther translated the Bible, 
and you have translated Homer into German; it is my 
work to translate philosophy into our tongue.’®) This 
approach to philosophy through its history, which was 
the approach of Schleiermacher as well as of Hegel, 
differentiates the spirit of these men sharply from that 
of their seventeenth and eighteenth century predeces- 
sors. The great pioneers of modern philosophy had 


15G. W. F. Hegel, Werke, v. xix, p. 52. See also Schleier- 
macher’s Letters, v. 1, p. 14. 


XXil SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


largely believed with Descartes that literary and his- 
torical studies were a temptation to be avoided in 
favor of the more serious pursuit of mathematics. 
Such intellectual puritanism had its moral counter- 
part in the prudence with which the middle classes, 
amid the wantonness of arbitrary government and re- 
ligious fanaticism, laid the economic foundations of 
their well-being. An appreciation of rational order 
was for them, as for the philosophers, the highest wis- 
dom, and for a brief time in the eighteenth century 
religious feeling fastened on cogency and order as the 
supreme evidence of divinity. But the same century 
also witnessed a change of temper at the close. Coin- 
cident with increased prosperity and the recognized 
triumph of modern society over mediaevalism and 
feudalism, came the awakening of new desires and a 
general widening of interests. Security and order, 
once established, were no longer the ideal; variety and 
fullness of life took their place. People discovered 
the bareness of puritan rationalism, and demanded a 
richer measure of thought and feeling. The revival 
of interest in ancient Greek culture was but one item 
in a romantic program of general spiritual expansion. 

It is customary to contrast this new romantic tem- 
per of mind with the rationalism that preceded it, to 
set the philosophy of spirit which it produced over 
against the seventeenth and eighteenth century philos- 
ophy of nature. But underlying both the ideal of 
rational order and the romantic ideal, as a continuous 
historical process, was the making of modern society 
with a new system of natural and civil law. The 
French Revolution was neither the beginning nor the 
end of this process, but simply inaugurated a phase of 


INTRODUCTION XXill 


freer expansion, and it was this opportunity of freer 
expansion that excited the romantic temper of mind. 
When the ideal of civil liberty was once established 
as a political force, the emancipation movement, far 
from disappearing, became universal and polymor- 
phous. Similarly, the idea of scientific inquiry did not 
disappear in romanticism, but was extended from the 
field of nature to other fields, and surrounded with new 
emotional values. Science came to be conceived as a 
function of Spirit, a phase in the life of reason, not 
merely as an inquiry into the laws of nature. It some- 
times seems as if romanticism had carried us far from 
a rational pursuit of liberty and truth. It has made 
the pursuit more difficult, because it has manifolded 
and enriched the meaning of liberty and truth. But 
this very quality of manifold and enriched idealism, 
with all its characteristic antitheses, which is the 
essence of romanticism, implies a continuity with mod- 
ern society in its simpler beginnings, such as would 
permit the gradual accumulation of many purposes. 
Had there been a real break with the past and a new 
beginning in the nineteenth century (e. g., like that 
involved in the rise of new peoples within the Roman 
Empire), the new spirit of that century could scarcely 
have been modern romanticism. 

The gradual transition to romanticism seemed all 
the more like an absolute break with the past and a 
radically new beginning, because it coincided with a 
shift in philosophic leadership from Great Britain 
and France to Germany. The fact that romantic ideal- 
ism received its most impressive philosophic statement 
in Germany rather than in another country, and hence 
that it was permeated with German characteristics, 


XXIV SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


has tended to an identification or at least to the 
assumption of an essential connection between the 
German spirit and the romantic spirit. But it was the 
circumstances under which German philosophy was 
made, fully as much as the influence of German char- 
acter, that caused the greatest creation of Germany in 
the realm of philosophy to be a romantic type of meta- 
physics. It was not the romantic character of all 
things German that caused romanticism to find its 
classic expression in Weimar, Jena, and Berlin. (The 
ingredients or elements of a work like Faust are many 
of them quite the opposite of romantic; it is their com- 
bination, the attempt to embrace magic and science, 
poetry and politics, Hellenism and Protestantism, 
romance and toil in the compass of a single life that 
is strikingly romantic and peculiar to the ambitions of 
modern society become conscious of its diverse riches.) 
It was rather the fact that all things German were 
being gathered up into classic syntheses at a time 
when the prevailing mentality was romantic. And 
this fact in turn can not be attributed solely to the 
influence of great individuals, who happened to be 
Germans, like Immanuel Kant and Goethe. A combi- 
nation of many historic circumstances brought the 
making of German cultural traditions in a special 
measure under the influence of romanticism, and 
hence reciprocally the romantic movement enjoyed a 
larger measure of life in Germany than anywhere else, 
and received a strong German coloring. Germany as 
such was just beginning to exist, the various forces of 
her life were fruitfully combining with each other, 
when modern society reached that stage of develop- 
ment which provoked the romantic temper, and hence 


- INTRODUCTION XXV 


in Germany the romantic movement coincided with a 
great national awakening. To glorify manifold activ- 
ity and differentiation at the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century meant in Germany to participate actu- 
ally in the integration and molding of a new national 
life. It was the force of this opportunity that made 
German poets and philosophers in fullest measure the 
interpreters of this particular moment in western 
civilization. 

While German philosophy was still predominantly 
rationalistic in spirit, still under the sway of Leibniz 
and Wolff, eighteenth century British and French 
thought had gone a long way toward transforming and 
undermining the intellectual orthodoxy of enlightened 
rationalism. The emergence of romantic concepts and 
categories came gradually, in different ways for differ- 
ent minds, but the final, decisive influence for Schleier- 
macher and for most of his German contemporaries at 
least were the ideas of Immanuel Kant. While Schlei- 
ermacher was still a student at the University of Halle, 
the first wave of Kantianism swept over Germany, 
and poured through the crumbling walls of orthodox 
rationalism. His teacher, Eberhard, was not much im- 
pressed with this new “critical philosophy,’ but Schlei- 
ermacher was prepared to study his Kant alone. After 
leaving the University in 1789, he went to live with 
his uncle, a professor of theology well-acquainted 
with Sack, the court-preacher to Frederick the Great 
and with other élite of the Reformed Church in Ger- 
many. The library and companionship of his uncle 
were intended to help him prepare for the theological 
examinations required of all candidates for the min- 
istry, but Schleiermacher apparently gave more atten- 


XXVI1 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


tion to Kant than to theology. In 1790 he wrote to a 
friend “my belief in the Kantian philosophy increases 
daily, especially as I compare it with the Leibnizean.’’** 

For Leibniz the major aspects of the world were 
determined by the great structures of mathematical 
physics, Christian theology, and civil law; the business 
of philosophy was to understand the nature of these 
structures so as to assure their harmonious develop- 
ment. Among such definitely ordered materials ration- 
alism was very much at home, and felt confident to 
sketch out a plan of the entire universe. Schleier- 
macher was separated from this point of view, not 
by his own individual thinking, but by a whole cen- 
tury of change which many minds had jointly pro- 
duced, and which affected all his contemporaries. 
Through the gradual accumulation of new knowledge 
and new powers, the sharpening of criticism and the 
awakening of new interests, the structures underly- 
ing the metaphysics of rationalism were being rapidly 
outgrown. In England John Locke developed an em- 
pirical psychology which showed, as Berkeley pointed 
out, the irrelevance of mathematical physics to much 
of ordinary experience, while David Hume not only 
drove this point home, but also revealed the repug- 
nance of theological rationalism to the progress of 
experimental reasoning. In France, Rousseau de- 
clared that it was not necessary in practical affairs to 
follow the external sanctions of legal precedent; a 
more rational system of legislation than the existing 
one could be framed by the free decision of autono- 
mous human wills. The crucial importance of Imman- 
uel Kant’s thought for Schleiermacher and his con- 


16 Briefe, v. 4, p. 45. 


INTRODUCTION XXVil 


temporaries lay in the fact that Kant had something 
like a universal grasp of these changes taking place 
piecemeal in many minds, and was the first to suggest 
a program of philosophic reconstruction appropriate to 
the situation as a whole. For instance, in Rousseau’s 
attitude toward legislation he saw the general concep- 
tion of reason as an active principle progressing in the 
light of its own intrinsic ideals, and it was this concep- 
tion which he placed at the center of his program. Do 
not look for reason in some external structure of the 
physical world or of traditional practices and beliefs, but 
dare to trust the inner reason active in producing these 
structures, which knows it can produce better ones. 
There was no difficulty in Schleiermacher’s choice 
between Kant and Leibniz. It would have been vir- 
tually impossible for him, or for any contemporary 
with similar interests and education, to prefer the tra- 
ditional Leibnizean system. He might possibly appre- 
ciate the true greatness of its mathematical inventions, 
the refined elegance of its theology, and the humane 
purpose of its legal erudition, but he could no longer 
regard these qualities as the primary requisites of phil- 
osophy. When Schleiermacher left the University of 
Halle, in the eventful year of 1789, although he was 
fundamentally interested in religion and planned to 
enter the ministry, he could associate many of Leib- 
niz’s refined disquisitions with the “theological rub- 
bish” he had left behind in the Moravian seminary. 
Mathematics appealed to him as a pastime. In fits of 
depression, he says he liked “to lose himself in resolv- 
ing algebraic formulas or in geometric demonstra- 
tions.”"" How different from Leibniz, who says he 


17 Briefe, v. 4, p. 25. 


XXVili SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


found himself in mathematics!** Equally great was 
the contrast in their attitudes toward the law. For 
Leibniz the development of jurisprudence seemed an 
all-important means of abolishing the social anarchy 
of his day, whereas Schleiermacher’s deepest interest 
in the growth of a freer human culture with finer and 
wider feeling for the varied whole of life fed chiefly 
upon literary and historical materials, leading him into 
a region of mind beyond law, where legalistic thinking 
of the most delicate kind seemed too inflexible and 
coarse. 

This was the region inhabited by whatever reason 
was active, not only within Schleiermacher, but also 
in the minds of his young contemporaries, Friedrich 
Schlegel, Schelling, and Hegel, who were to make the 
German philosophy of the future. All these young 
men, who, in the same decade began their intellectual 
careers with the study of ancient Greek civilization, 
were essentially interested, like Schleiermacher, in 
the making of a richer modern culture. Naturally they 
welcomed the Kantian suggestion to reconstruct phil- 
osophy in the light of an active inner reason. At the 
same time, Kant’s ideas needed much readjustment 
and revision to suit their purposes. 

For Kant’s conception of reason, while it looked 
beyond the rationalities of the past, was still largely 
legalistic in character. He took the physics, the the- 
ology, and the law of his time as unfinished in sub- 
stance, to be sure, but nevertheless as perfect in type, 
and he thought of his free inner reason as conquering 
new fields of knowledge by casting new materials into 


18 See his letter to Remond de Montmort, 1714, quoted in 
Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy. 


INTRODUCTION XX1X 


molds of this same type. This is most clearly appar- 
ent when one examines his own ventures into the 
newer branches of science, for instance, in biology, in 
history, and also in esthetics. In history and esthetics 
he is strong in the making of general distinctions, in 
legislating a scheme of interpretation, but often weak 
in his specific intuitions. In biology he stuck to the 
hypothesis of fixed forms; in reviewing Herder’s 
Ideas for a Philosophy of Human History, a work of 
great imagination published in 1784, he speaks of evo- 
lution as “an idea from which reason shrinks back as 
meaningless.”?® Kant followed the trend of events 
assiduously, especially the progress of intellectual mat- 
ters, but he could not, in a rapidly differentiating 
world, keep abreast of his contemporaries in every- 
thing, to say nothing of foreseeing the vast changes 
that were to come in the nineteenth century. Still less 
could he appreciate the revolution in spirit and senti- 
ment involved by these changes, the variety of passion- 
ate idealisms which they engendered. He harbored 
the eighteenth century suspicion of enthusiasts. In 
morals he was an enlightened puritan, inasmuch as he 
exalted humanity and believed in freeing morality 
from external sanctions, whether legal or religious or 
even natural, but he was a puritan still, for he attrib- 
uted absolute worth to nothing in man save the moral 
will, and relegated all other idealisms, whether esthe- 
tic, political, intellectual, or religious to a distinctly sec- 
ond place. His conception of right human relations 
was still based largely on notions of natural and civil 
law, ideas of contract and obligation, and he tried to 


19 Tmmanuel Kant, Rezensionen von J. G. Herders Ideen zur 
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. Teil 1. See also 
E. Adickes, Kant als Naturforscher, vol. ii, pp. 433-445, §328. 


XXX SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


sum up the essence of morality in terms of obedience 
to a supreme law or rigidly stated principle. His 
practical social ideal was the realization of a universal 
system of civil !aw, which would eliminate the reign 
of arbitrary force between states. His theology left 
the rationalistic conception of Providence and immor- 
tality virtually untouched, his reforms in this field be- 
ing confined to an attempt at preventing theological 
concepts from encroaching on the legitimate province 
of natural science, by insisting that the right to relig- 
ious belief is in its nature moral and not theoretic. 

In brief, though Kant himself called his conception 
of reason revolutionary, he scarcely realized the 
nature and extent of the revolution in which it was 
implicated. Not only was the claim of physics and 
theology to dominate over philosophy, challenged by his 
ideas, but the field was thrown open for every kind 
of wisdom that offered to satisfy a human appeal. And 
since modern society had developed to a point where 
the life it offered seemed teeming with various appeals, 
this invitation to develop a richer philosophy was en- 
thusiastically welcomed. It was not long before phil- 
osophers had written metaphysics, not only in terms 
of the great and universal interests of mankind, such 
as science, art, and religion, but also in terms of every 
whim, all sorts of social institutions, and the tradi- 
tions of the past as well. The nineteenth century 
saw the birth of a new industrial world, a new chem- 
ical, biological, and historical world, the making of 
new nations and empires. Few people could contem- 
plate the spectacle of these changes with a dry Kan- 
tian rationality. Romanticism was a kind of spiritual 
quicksilver in minds that rushed to possess all this 


INTRODUCTION XXxXi 


new treasure, without being themselves thoroughly 
possessed by any part of it. It was inevitable that 
this type of mind, aflame with new truths, should be 
the quickest to appreciate the liberation from previ- 
ous dogmatisms involved in Kantian philosophy. And 
so it happened that Kant’s most enthusiastic followers 
became his most radical transformers. For a brief 
period they poured their rich vision into gorgeous 
poetry and great imaginative syntheses of idealistic 
metaphysics. What Kant had intended as a new 
philosophy of the advancing critical spirit was thus 
speedily converted, by the romantic temper of the 
times, into a philosophy of the all-inclusive, appreci- 
ative, and creative spirit. 

This tendency to welcome, but at the same time to 
revise Kant’s ideas, so as to include values neglected 
by him, makes itself manifest from the start in Schlei- 
ermacher’s relations to Kantian philosophy. There 
are some manuscripts dating from 1789 to 1794, the 
years in which, after leaving the University, he was 
first coming to independent grips with philosophy, and 
in them one may see how his thought starts from 
Kantian ideas and moves away from them in a direc- 
tion of his own.?° He agrees with Kant in rejecting 
hedonism, but he wants a richer morality than that 
summed up in obedience to the categorical impera- 
tive. Kant himself admits that such obedience may 
well fall short of achieving the summum bonum, and 
it seems unreasonable to Schleiermacher that the car- 
dinal principle of morality should be indifferent to 
any of the chief goods of life. (The relation between 


20 See Appendix, pp. 115-123 for a more detailed account of 
these early essays. Cf. also Dilthey, pp. 36-152; N. E. 48-188 
in connection with pp. xxxi-xxxv of the present text. 


XXXil SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


the moral law and the summum bonum, he thinks, 
should be like that between an algebraic equation and 
the geometrical curve described in accordance with 
it.)*t In place of Kant’s idea of duty he seeks a cer- 
tain ideal sense of life (eine gewisse Idealempfindung 
des Lebens), which shall embrace a harmonious de- 
velopment of all distinctively human powers, doing 
justice to the intellectual, volitional and emotional 
sides of man’s nature. In regard to religion Schleier- 
macher agrees with Kant in wanting to keep theologi- 
cal concepts out of natural science, but he feels the 
religious life to be something more than a belief in 
the tenets of Deistic Christianity for morality’s sake. 
As one who had been “nursed in the womb of piety,””? 
he associated a strong sense of the divine presence 
with religion. This sense he missed in Kant’s philos- 
ophy, but found in greater measure in Spinoza. Spi- 
noza at least did justice to religious consciousness on 
one side by the sublime way in which he conceived the 
universe as a definitely ordered and unified whole, but 
on the other hand, Spinoza’s system violated the sense 
of human personality. For in Spinozistic metaphysics 
to be an individual means to be limited; each individ- 
ual is but a small fragment of nature, and can achieve 
true dignity only by transcending his individuality 
through intellectual comprehension of the universe. 
Schleiermacher’s fundamental problem is to find a 
world view which does justice to human personality 
on the one hand, and to the infinite universe that 
stands over against man on the other. He wants the 


21 See below pp. 116-117. 
22 On Religion, p. 9. 


INTRODUCTION XXXill 


advantages of both Kantian and Spinozistic meta- 
physics, of freedom and determinism.** 

The ideas of these early papers point directly to 
Schleiermacher’s mature works the Speeches on Relig- 
ton, 1799, and the Soliloquies, 1800. In fact, when 
he came to review his own spiritual development in 
the Soliloquies, he saw fit to quote whole pages almost 
word for word from some of these early papers. At 
the same time there is a vast difference between 
Schleiermacher’s work in 1793, at twenty-four years 
of age, and his work in 1799, at thirty, a difference 
like that between a honeycomb when it is empty and 
when it is full** In 1793 he is quick in the analysis 
of ideas, in stating his objections and to a certain 
extent his objectives abstractly ; in 1799 his own point 
of view has been filled out with experience and self- 
assurance. In Schleiermacher’s case a certain abstract 
intellectual grasp of romantic principles preceded the 
actual substantial flowering of the romantic spirit it- 
self. The first twenty years of his life were devoted 
almost entirely to study, and were quite restricted in 
their personal contacts. Of course he had a few 
friends, but being naturally shy and retiring he had 
no knowledge of the world, no taste of the satisfac- 
tions which varied and extensive society can bring. 
Speaking of the time from 1789 to 1791, which he 
spent at his uncle’s home in the little town of Drossen, 
he says, “In quiet solitude I watched the great fer- 
ments of the inner and the outer world” (Kantianism 
and the French Revolution).2°> His manner of life 
developed in hima fine critical and appreciative fac- 


23 See below pp. 119-123. 
24 Tbid., pp. 123-130. 
25 Tbid., pp. 74-75. 


XXXIV SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


ulty, but he missed the spiritual support of positive 
experience. He was often depressed, as many of his 
letters show. He found it necessary “to strengthen 
his heart”’ daily by reading from the satirists, ancient 
and modern cynics like Lucian, Montaigne and Wie- 
and. He was uncertain as to his vocation, drifting 
toward the ministry, yet feeling that “the world will 
remain ever as it is, nor. will morals and religion ac- 
complish anything on the whole.” In letters to his 
friend Brinkmann, an avowed cynic, he came to the 
point of discussing the merits of suicide. A slight 
touch of disillusionment took a permanent place in 
Schleiermacher’s character. Even after he attained 
a fresh grip on himself, and other qualities came to 
the fore, his friends would sometimes see in him “den 
klugen Schleier’ (the satirical Schleier), “ and God 
knows what rather than the real Schleier.”?® 

The initial forces that lifted Schleiermacher from 
this depression were not philosophical, but personal. 
In 1790, after passing the examinations which entitled 
him to preach, he accepted a position as tutor in the 
family of Count Dohna. This family had its estates 
at Schlobitten in East Prussia, was of the old nobility, 
and active in public affairs. “In a stranger’s home,” 
says Schleiermacher, “my sense for the beauty of 
human fellowship was first awakened; I saw that it 
takes freedom to ennoble and give right expression to 
the delicate intimacies of human nature.”27 Here, too, 
he had his first experience of love, in the form of a 
silent passion for a younger daughter of the Count. 
He began to get his Idealempfindung des Lebens. 


_?8 See Briefe, v. 4, pp. 27, 29, 39, 42, from which the quota- 
tions above are chosen. 
27 See below p. 74. 


INTRODUCTION XXXV 


From 1793-96 there followed upon these years at 
Schlobitten a valuable experience of teaching and 
preaching, first in Berlin at one of the large schools 
for orphans, and then at Landsberg, where he took 
up his first charge as a preacher. So successful was 
Schleiermacher in these posts that in 1796 he was 
given an appointment as chaplain for the Reformed 
Confession in a large Berlin hospital, the Charité. 
Here in Berlin from 1796-1802 he finally came into 
immediate personal contact with the larger intellectual 
currents of the time, meeting men whose minds were 
working along lines similar to those in which his own 
thought was half-articulately moving. : 

For while Schleiermacher was slowly ripening in 
experience during these years, the romantic spirit, of 
which his spirit was a part, had already received im- 
mortal expression in the work of his contemporaries. 
As early as 1773 Goethe had published his Gétz von 
Berlichingen, and in 1774 had spread the romantic gos- 
pel far and wide in his moving description of The Sor- 
rows of Young Werther. ‘The first part of Faust 
appeared in 1790. In the ’90’s too Fichte began to 
proclaim a new idealism; in 1792 his Critique of Re- 
ligious Revelations appeared, in 1794 his Foundations 
of the Theory of Knowledge, in 1796 his System of 
Natural Right, in ’97 his First Introduction to the Sct- 
ence of Knowledge. In Goethe the consciousness of 
life’s varied fullness produced an infinite succession 
of dramatic and poetic images, in which the whole 
slumbering world of romanticism seemed suddenly to 
awake. From Fichte there came no such stream of 
images. In him this entire world seemed to concen- 
trate its force in the channel of moral pressure. The 


XXXVI SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


Kantian revolution, as he interpreted it, meant to re- 
place the stagnant moralities of law and convention 
by the infinite energizing of an inwardly moral will. 
In Goethe and Fichte romanticism had found its poet 
and its prophet.?* 

As is usually the case, the new gospel was born in 
the quiet freedom of the provinces, and only gradually 
took possession of the great capitals where the exist- 
ing order was naturally strongest. The first great 
works of romantic literature, fresh, strong, and honest 
in their feeling for a larger and more varied world than 
that of eighteenth century conventions, were conceived 
in Strassburg, Jena, and Weimar. In Strassburg, 
where the mediaeval spirit lingered in the vastness of 
its cathedral, and where the contrast of French and 
German character suggested distinctions other than 
those of law and convention; in Jena and Weimar, 
where the political element was in the diminutive and 
even the Prince not only had interest, but time for 
poetry and science. In the provinces Goethe’s glorifica- 
tion of the lawless knight in Gétzg and of the idle lover 
in Werther, and Schiller’s eulogy of The Robbers 
could be conceived. But in the metropolis of Berlin 
the spirit of law and of rationalistic enlightenment still 
persisted; until 1786 in fact it was enthroned in the 
person of the “philosopher-king” himself, Frederick 
the Great of Prussia. Here was the seat of orderly govy- 
ernment, and here an active group of popular philoso- 
phers and journalists, like Nicolai, turned rationalistic 
thought into a praise of civic virtue. But here too,,as 
in every large city, were splendid opportunities for 
a more daring sort of parlor intellectualism. Into this 


28 Dilthey, pp. 155-182; N. E. 191-218. 


INTRODUCTION XXXVII 


medium the new literature of romanticism came like 
an electric shock. The manner of the idle lover 
Werther was discussed and adopted and became a self- 
conscious fashion, all the more because of the con- 
trasted commercial and political spirit of the town.*® 
The salon Schleiermacher most frequented was that 
of the brilliant Madame Herz; here he met Friedrich 
Schlegel in 1/97. Thereafter, half the day, he says, 
was spent in reading, chatting, and walking with Schle- 
gel and Madame Herz, and his greatest joy would 
have been to spend more time this way. For, “Leisure 
was his gracious goddess. ‘She teackes man to know 
and to confirm himself.’’*° Schlegel and Schleiermacher 
both shared the general enthusiasm for the new spirit, 
and in particular they met on the common ground of 
an interest in the Greek classics. They became close 
friends, and for a while roomed together. Schleier- 
macher was the more reserved, the more careful, criti- 
cal, dependable, and persevering of the two, Schlegel 
the more mature, enterprising, and imaginative. 
Although he was little older than Schleiermacher, he 
had already made an impression as an author, and had 
an ambitious program of production. He aspired to out- 
Goethe Goethe and out-Fichte Fichte. He would rev- 
olutionize taste and morals by the criticism of history, 
by putting before the narrow, conventional public 
mind the whole gamut of human nature as revealed 
in its infinitely varied manifestations. He would add 
to this imaginative sketches and romances, portraying 
possible forms of humanity as yet unrealized. (His 
brother William had projected and begun translations 


29 Dilthey, pp. 182-194; N. E. 218-230. 
80 See below, p. 36, Soliloquies, and cf. Letters, v. 1, p. 170, 
and p. 268. 


XXXVII1 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


of Cervantes, of Dante, of Shakespeare, and of Hindu 
classics—all admirably suited to his program.) Schle- 
gel gathered about himself a group of young intellec- 
tuals, among them Tieck, Novalis, and Schleier- 
macher.*! Together they published The Athenaeum 
(from 1798-1800), a journal devoted to spreading 
“the real romanticism.” They looked upon the work 
of Goethe and Fichte as impressive and invaluable, but 
still as somewhat coarse-grained. Fichte’s ethics, for 
example, did not show enough appreciation of indi- 
vidual differences. In later years an English critic, 
having large contrasts in mind, spoke of Goethe as 
the great opponent of Philistinism, but in those years 
Novalis could say, as a member of the inner romantic 
circle: Goethe is impossibly bourgeois.*? When one 
compares the names of literary characters created by 
Goethe, such as Gretchen, Wilhelm Meister, Werther, 
with those more favored by the “real romanticists,” 
for instance, Julian, Florentin, Hyperion, Thalia, Evre- 
mont, Woldemar, and Hyacinth, one gets an inkling of 
what is meant. This latter group of characters and 
their authors represent the interest in variety and im- 
agination grown fastidious, delicate, extravagant, doc- 
trinnaire, self-conscious, refined, and volatile, satur- 
ating every atom of existence with its essence. 

Two salient facts, aside from qualities of personal 
character, set off Schleiermacher from the rest of this 
romantic group, and made his position in it somewhat 
anomalous. In the first place, he was a preacher by 
profession, whereas most of the others inclined to 
identify religion, especially the church, with the old 

81 See Dilthey, pp. 194-296ff.; N. E. 230-331, in re the Ber- 


lin romanticists. 
32 Novalis, Schriften, v. 2, pp. 68 ff. 


INTRODUCTION XXX1X 


order and its cultural limitations. In the second place, 
he had no marked literary gift, while the essential 
medium of the group’s activity was literary. Schleier- 
macher was extremely conscious that both of these 
circumstances were deeply rooted in his character, and 
must have felt that if he was to maintain his position 
in the group he had to show at least that they were 
no obstacle. Schlegel was forever prodding him to 
write something, but could get nothing from him ex- 
cept short contributions to the Athenaeum. Finally, 
in 1797, on Schleiermacher’s birthday, he extracted a 
promise of something more ambitious.** The result 
was the beginning next year of a work On Religion: 
Speeches addressed to its cultured despisers. By the 
cultured despisers of religion were meant pre-emi- 
nently Schleiermacher’s fellow romanticists, whom he 
undertook to show that a true love of life’s fullness 
and variety would make them friendly to religion. This 
was followed in 1800 by the Soliloquies, meditations 
on the more intimate and personal question of his own 
inner nature and its relations to his friends. Herein 
he argued that even without producing works, for in- 
stance, literary works, he might still find his salvation 
in the romantic faith alone. 

Both the Speeches and the Soliloqumes are thus apol- 
ogetic in motive, but by virtue of their substance they 
belong to that class of apologies which sum up and 
modify the ideas, not of single individuals merely, but 
of the universal mind.** The Speeches on Religion 
appeared first in 1799, and it was in part his enthusi- 


ao poe v. 1, p. 163. Also see Dilthey, pp. 235-236; N. E. 
-272. 

34 Dilthey, pp. 297-508; N. E. 331-551 for the Reden and 
Monologen. 


xl SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


asm over their successful completion that led Schleier- 
macher so quickly to the publication of a second work, 
the Soliloquies in 1800. But much of this second work 
was really conceived earlier than the Speeches, and in 
a fundamental sense presupposed by them, as an 
author’s life is always presupposed in his works, for 
the theme of the Soliloquies is that of Schleiermacher’s 
own spiritual development, and whole sections of the 
work are virtually quoted word for word from essays 
in manuscript and from sermons dating from the years 
of his philosophic awakening 1789-1793.°> As a con- 
tributor to the Athenaeum Schleiermacher had long 
planned to develop the ideas of these early essays into 
something like a formal polemic against Kantian- 
Fichtean ethics. At the same time he was tempted 
by the example of his colleagues, Schlegel, Tieck and 
others, to try his hand at more fanciful forms of writ- 
ing, and for a time played with the idea of a romantic 
novel embodying his ethical views.*® His sensitive 
imagination and his strong critical bent were forever 
at war over the choice of a literary medium. Finally 
in 1799, the successful completion of his Speeches on 
Religion (a form of literary expression in which 
preaching had made him competent) gave him greater 
poise and self-confidence. On the evening of his 
birthday, a few months later, he wrote to his sister: 
“T wish you could share the quiet joy which possesses 
my soul. I rejoice over the past, and for the present, 
and I look with equanimity toward the future, what- 
ever it may bring. I can say with reasonable certainty 
that this will be my ruling mood as long as I live, for 


85 See below p. 118 and note. 
36 See below p. 88 and note. And also Dilthey, pp. 289-296; 
N. E. 323-331. 


INTRODUCTION xli 


it is grounded in my inmost self.”** In this spirit of 
self-possession, and of happy reminiscence, the idea 
of the Soliloquies seems to have suggested itself to 
Schleiermacher, a series of meditations dealing with 
the problems of his inner life, as the Speeches had just 
dealt with the fundamental problems underlying his 
public vocation as a preacher. The idea took pos- 
session of him, and he completed the Soliloqmes in 
less than four weeks, virtually “dictating it to the 
printer,” he says. He was able to do this, because 
he took the idea of soliloquy seriously, and felt sin- 
gularly free to follow his spontaneous impulses. He 
put in extracts from his early papers, bits of polemic 
against popular rationalism, against Kant and Fichte, 
personalia and philosophy just as the spirit moved him. 
He indulged his literary conceit by casting the whole 
into a kind of effusive rhythmic prose. The result 
cannot be called very happy from the point of view of 
construction and style, but as a revelation of his spirit 
and its romantic milieu it could scarcely be surpassed. 
To Henrietta Herz he happily spoke of the book as 
“a lyric extract from the diary of his abiding self.’’® 

There are five soliloquies or meditations, and the 
first is on the general theme of meditation itself. 
Schleiermacher considers the different ways in which 
people introspect and take account of themselves and 
their lives. There are the people who sit down on 
New Year’s Day,*® or at some other time appointed 


37 Letters, v. 1, pp. 227-228. 

88 See Schiele’s introduction to the Monologen (Schiele, pp. 
xiv-xxxv) for these quotations and much else of interest re- 
garding the origin of the Soliloquies. 

39 Schleiermacher had preached on this New Year’s Day 
theme in 1792, and the sermon contains many ideas later devel- 
oped more fully in the Soliloquies. Cf. p. 12 and note. 


xlii SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


by mere convention, to review the joys and sorrows 
of the past, or to count up their achievements and 
shortcomings. Such people are slaves to circumstance, 
because they look at life, even their own lives, from 
the outside. They naturally think of the world as 
the primary reality, and of life as a series of temporal 
experiences taking place in the world. Either they 
try to dwell on the particular experiences which sat- 
isfy them most, while time relentlessly sweeps them 
on, or they set up an external ideal of perfection, a 
God above the world and an immortal blessedness after 
death. Their’s is the popular rationalism of the age, 
which finds reason essentially in the external facts of 
nature and of convention. How different from the 
meditations of “these children of the age” are those 
of the man for whom the spirit within himself and in 
others and in the world is the primary reality! For 
him circumstances are but the occasions and the mate- 
rials through which the spirit manifests itself. In the 
consciousness of a spiritual nature, and of opportuni- 
ties everywhere present for its exercise, he has an 
unfailing sense of his freedom, and feels himself to 
be in immediate contact with the Infinite and Eternal, 
partaking of God and immortality in every moment. 

The second soliloquy leaves the empiricist behind, 
and treats in autobiographical terms of Schleiermach- 
er’s own discoveries in the realm of spirit. First, the 
awakening of a sense of the ideal possibilities of 
human life is described in language suggesting that 
of religious conversion. The sense of exalted assur- 
ance which this awakening gives is contrasted with the 
pitiable squirming of the unconverted human before 
his conscience. Conscience is generally a distorted 


INTRODUCTION xlili 


form of ideal consciousness, the ideal turned prison- 
warden of the self. This description of conscience is 
the first note in a new polemic now introduced against 
Kant and Fichte. The moral life as they picture it is 
life lived in the light of a universal reason, the same 
for every one. But, penetrating more deeply into the 
realm of spirit, Schleiermacher discovers a higher law 
of individuation. Each human being has his own 
unique place within the sphere of humanity, and it is 
only by his approaching this that he can exercise his 
influence in the spiritual community. This discovery 
leads to the theme of human variety, of Schleiermach- 
er’s own character and its relation to that of his 
friends, his convictions and remaining uncertainties. 
He divides humanity into two large groups, according 
to whether the productive or the receptive impulse 
predominates. He places himself in the latter group, 
protesting to his artist friends that they should not 
urge him to produce works. Let them recognize that 
it is as truly an art to mold one’s own nature as to 
mold words and sounds. The problems of the recep- 
tive spirit are discussed, its requirements, and its 
genius for sympathetic understanding in love and 
friendship. But there is a note of uncertainty through- 
out. Schleiermacher protests too much, and later, in. 
the fourth soliloquy, when he returns to autobiog- 
raphy, confesses his hankering to pour the whole es- 
sence of his nature into a novel.*° 

The third soliloquy contrasts two ideals of civiliza- 
tion, showing how the empirical and the spiritual view- 
points lead to two different conceptions of humanity’s 
task on earth. For the former, progress tends to be 


40 See below p. 88 and note. 


xliv SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


measured in terms of man’s control over nature; 
human co-operation, as in the economic division of 
labor, is directed toward this end. At most, men 
help each other to be happy. But the pursuit of higher, 
spiritual interests, in the present state of human devel- 
opment, each soul must conduct alone? Where is the 
art of fellowship and association in these matters? 
“Whatever spiritual association now exists is debased 
in service of the earthly.’ Friendship, marriage, and 
the state, when not viewed as means to individual 
pleasure, are ordinarily regarded with reference to 
some other external function, but very rarely as dis- 
tinct forms of spiritual life. Just as the present domin- 
ion of man over nature was undreamed of by primi- 
tive man, so are we blind to the possibilities of spir- 
itual society. But here and there the inner glow of a 
better future appears in the words and actions of some 
individual. As soon, however, as his precious accents 
and manners are recognized by others, and become 
current, the danger arises that they be imitated and 
debased by worldlings. True inwardness, true spirit- 
uality, must ever be won anew. Man belongs to the 
world he helps to create; and so Schleiermacher and 
his romantic friends are strangers to the crude pres- 
ent, prophet-children of a better time. 

The fourth soliloquy asks for assurance as to the 
future, and faces the problem of destiny. The answer 
is that freedom hinges on self-determination of the 
proper kind. As long as one seeks some particular 
external disposition of things, the future must seem 
uncertain, the problems of casuistry and magic are 
vital. One wants to know whether the outward pow- 


41 See below p. 56. 


INTRODUCTION xlv 


ers are arbitrary or providential. But as soon as one 
accepts the task of self-culture, and keeps the whole 
of its implications before the mind, all fear vanishes, 
for every circumstance, whatever it be, is an oppor- 
tunity toward such an ideal. “The spirit can find 
no evil in anything that merely changes its activity 
from one form to another.’’** The theme now returns 
to autobiography. Schleiermacher reviews the re- 
sults of the past for his own self-culture, and outlines 
the opportunities which remain for him in the future. 
But what if fate should rob him of these?—the main 
question is raised again. For instance, suppose he 
should be obliged to leave Berlin, in the midst of his 
scientific and cultural interests, and go to some small, 
unlettered province. Imagination will then supply the 
absent goods. He applies this solution even to his 
hope of marriage—if his beloved is denied him, he 
will live with her in imagination! “In the future as 
in the past I shall take possession of the whole world 
by virtue of inner activity.”*? Here one sees clearly 
the interdependence in romanticist philosophy of its 
characteristic inwardness and its desire for a rich, 
varied experience. Everything attracts the romanti- 
cist; if he cannot have one thing he will fall in love 
with another, and what he cannot have in fact he will 
have in imagination. It does not much matter what 
particular items fall into these two classes; hence the 
confusion of categories, hence the indifference to the 
distinction between fact and fancy. The reality of the 
imagined, in a sophisticated, critical mind, hinges on 
the fact that one wants so many and such choice things, 
that one can have them only in imagination. 


42 See below p. 94. 43 See below p. 82. 


xlvi SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


The last soliloquy is a beautiful rhapsody on the 
way the life of spirit should be lived. The contrast 
between youth and age furnishes the underlying motif. 
For the empiricist this is a temporal contrast; life is 
fresh and young at the start, and when youth is spent, 
then follows old age, dry and stiff, though not without 
its crown of virtues. For the spiritual eye, however, 
youth and age are two eternal principles, two deities, 
and in their early marriage in the human soul lies the 
secret of spiritual strength. The Soliloquies close with 
a picture of this strength: let your inmost self be ever 
young, tender, plastic, impressionable, forever grow- 
ing and blooming, but let what you offer to the world 
be always sound fruit, ripened and well-seasoned in 
the cool deliberation of mature wisdom. 

The Soliloquies reveal the tender, plastic center of 
Schleiermacher’s spirit, its eternal youthfulness and 
immaturity. But his Speeches on Religion, published 
a year earlier, had shown that he could produce sound 
fruit also.“4 In every way they are a firmer work, 
better-seasoned in judgment and harder in expression. 
Yet they are work of the same man and the same 
spirit, only deployed not on the tender center of his 
own personality, but more objectively on the segment 
of life in which he was most deeply interested, relig- 
ion. He undertakes a defence of religion, of Christi- 
anity and the church too, which in his view have all 
been misunderstood and depreciated because of the 
prevalence of popular rationalism and externalist phil- 
osophy. 

“The children of the age,” these externalists, are 
niggardly minds: everything must be plain to them. 


44 Cf. pp. 98-99 below and note. 


INTRODUCTION xl vii 


They believe that their conventions embrace the sphere 
of humanity, and that if others would only be enlight- 
ened and do as they do, no consciousness of further 
possibilities would be necessary. “They trim every- 
thing with their own shears, and will not suffer any- 
thing unusual, that might awaken a religious interest, 
to show its head. What can be seen and understood 
from their standpoint is all that they allow, and it is 
merely a small, waste land without science, without 
manners, without art, without love, without spirit, I 
might almost say without literacy; in short, lacking 
everything whereby one can get hold of reality. But 
these very peopie lay high claim to all these posses- 
sions. The believe they have the true reality, and that 
they alone see all things in their right relations. . 

For humanity in its present environment there are 
certain windows open to the Infinite, hewn-out case- 
ments, past which every man is led in order that his 
sensibility may find a way to the great All. The pros- 
pects from these casements, while they may not pro- 
duce religious feelings of a definite character, may still 
awaken a general susceptibility to religion. Hence 
these outlets are also prudently stopped up by the 
worldly-wise, and some caricature of philosophy is 
stood up in the opening. . . . Birth and death are such 
outlets. In their presence it is impossible to forget 
that our own selves are completely surrounded by the 
Infinite. Despite their frequency, as soon as they touch 
us nearly, they always cause an inner pang and a 
holy reverence. The immeasurability of sense percep- 
tion is also a hint at least of a still higher infinity. But 
nothing would better please those men of worldly wis- 
dom than to be able to measure the universe. And, 


xlviil SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


if the images of life and death approach them, believe 
me, however much they may speak of religion, they 
are much more concerned to use the occasion for win- 
ning their young to a cautious economy in the interest 
of prolonging life. This is the extreme of utilitarian- 
ism, and its punishment is to move slavishly in ancient 
forms of wisdom and to achieve improvements only 
in the lower aspects of life. It is enlightened barbar- 
ism, a fit counterpart for the old.’’*® 

The only religion these enlightened barbarians will 
allow is what they call natural or rational religion, a 
patcnwork they have put together of pieces cut out of 
their metaphysics, their ethics, and their religious tra- 
dition. But the fact that they can regard their ethics 
and metaphysics as rational shows the superficiality 
of their intellectualism. And their willingness to call 
this artificial construction of theirs a religion proves 
their utter lack of religious feeling. If this is to be 
the religion of modern times, the truly cultured are 
right in abandoning it and turning to atheism. For in 
their atheism they show more feeling for the Infinite 
than popular rationalism does in its religion.*® 

True religion is not a “patchwork of ethical and meta- 
physical crumbs,’ but “a sense and taste for the 
Infinite.’’** It neither begins nor ends with theology, 
but with a wider sense of our spiritual atmosphere, of 
the conditions and the possibilities with which infinite 
being surrounds us. Science strives for an under- 
standing of the universe, but religion seeks to adjust 
the very roots of our being, our feelings and actions 


45 On Religion, pp. 129-131. 

46 See On Religion, pp. 27ff., 214, 230ff. in re “natural re- 
ligion.” 

47 On Religion, pp. 31, 39. 


INTRODUCTION xlix 


as well as our ideas, to the whole in which we are 
placed. It is the making of a universe out of the ob- 
jective and the subjective, in which our whole being 
has its life. Two great spiritual tendencies combine 
in religion, the one toward individuality or uniqueness 
of soul and the other toward universality or fullness 
of soul.** Man is sensitive and responsive to a great 
variety of influences, peculiarly fitted to draw nourish- 
ment from the universe, and whatever he assimilates is 
thereby transformed and given a new significance; it 
enters a new unity, the artistic and purposeful unity 
of a personality. Through fullness of thought and 
action, and by wide receptivity to impressions of every 
kind the human individual gains a cosmic outlook, and 
at the same time enhances his individuality. By re- 
ceiving the universe into his soul, he becomes, as it 
were, the soul of a second universe where the planets 
move in communion with him, and where his individ- 
uality enters into the life of all. The universe itself 
acquires a kind of infinity through being thus received 
in individual souls, as if it were reflected and reflected 
again in an infinite series of different mirrors. 

Not to theology, which is but one aspect of religion. 
but to this making of worlds in which the human spirit 
is at home, Schleiermacher invites his romanticist 
friends. Here in the sphere of religion, he tells them, 
they will find the greatest scope for their love of in- 
dividuation, variety, and fullness. Science, morals, 
and art all have their special functions and limitations, 
but religion is the domain of pure spirituality in its 
immediacy and totality. These other activities are re- 
sponsible for the definite solution of specific problems 


48 Cf. below pp. 127-128. 


] SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


in theory and in practice, but religion lifts her eyes 
from the immediate scene or the immediate work | 
toward the ultimate beginnings and fruitions of life. 
It adds depth, intensity, and fullness to our otherwise 
thin experience. “Let no one turn from religion for 
the sake of his spiritual independence,” says Schleier- 
macher. It is not the possession of a sacred book, but 
an original and living understanding thereof that char- 
acterizes a truly religious spirit, not theology but the- 
ologizing. He was a more religious man who could 
make a Bible than he who reveres one.*® 

Well might Pope Pius X, in condemning modern- 
ism, warn the faithful that this philosophy of religion 
opened wide the door to individual religion!®® That 
it should do so was one of Schleiermacher’s most fer- 
vent wishes. The true church, he says, has ever ex- 
isted as a free communion between all truly religious 
spirits wherever they may be. “And the visible re- 
ligious society can only be brought nearer the univer- 
sal freedom and majestic unity of a true church by 
becoming a mobile mass, having no distinct outlines, 
each part being now here, now there, and all peace- 
fully mingling together. . . . According to the prin- 
ciples of the true church, the mission of the priest in 
the world is a private one, and the temple should also 
be a private chamber where he lifts up his voice to 
give utterance to religion. Let there be a gathering 
before him and not a congregation. Let him be a 
speaker for all who will hear, but not a shepherd for 
a definite flock. . . . Nay, finally in the development 
of culture, we expect a time when no other society 


49 On Religion, pp. 90-91. 
50 See the famous encyclical, Pascendi gregis. 


INTRODUCTION li 


will be required for religious teaching except a relig- 
ious family life.’’® 

But in this future age of free religious association 
and development what will become of the great world 
religions as we know them today? One might sup- 
pose that Schleiermacher with his extreme emphasis 
on individual religion would have little use for the 
great traditions of Judaism and Christianity and 
Mohammedanism. But such an impression he asso- 
ciates with the false view of popular rationalism that 
individuality means isolation. On the contrary, he 
says, individuation is not by exclusion, but by mani- 
fold relation; it involves innumerable organic fila- 
ments, among them historic connections, which only 
those who do not understand it can wish to destroy. 
“And just as no man can reach his fulfillment as an 
individual without in the process finding himself placed 
in a world with manifold relations to other objects 
and to a definite order of things, so no man can attain 
his religious individuation without thereby finding 
himself in a communion, that is, in a definite form of 
religion.”*? Within the universal realm of religion 
there are different provinces distinguished from each 
other by many specific circumstances that bear an im- 
portant relation to individual development. Judaism 
and Christianity are such provinces, distinguished 
among other ways by the fact that different religious 
emotions are dominant in each. Judaism is permeated 
everywhere by the desire for justification, Christianity 
by the desire for redemption. Such differences of 


51 On Religion, pp. 175, 178. 
52 On Religion, p. 230. 


lit SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


emotional complex are for Schleiermacher the most 
crucial differentia of the religions.” 

The Speeches on Religion close with an apprecia- 
tion of Christianity. Whoever feels with Christ that 
everything “finite requires a higher mediation to be 
in accord with the Deity, and that for man in bondage 
to the finite and particular, all too ready to imagine 
the divine itself in this form, salvation is only to be 
found in redemption, whoever has this sense of the 
divine and feels this need of redemption as the cardi- 
nal point in his religious consciousness is a Christian,” 
and ‘when he understands the whole efficacy of Christ 
in the religious world, he will acknowledge Him as the 
true founder of redemption and reconciliation.”** How 
he conceives the metaphysical status of Christ is an 
entirely secondary matter. As ministering to the need 
for redemption, Christianity will yet have a long his- 
tory. But will it become universal and exist as the 
sole type of religion? It scorns the thought of being 
so restrictive and despotic. Christ never said that his 
religious views and feelings expressed the whole of 
man’s relations to the Eternal. Christianity is essen- 
tially polemic, deeply conscious that the Perfect is in- 
finite and hence that all finite religion, including 
itself, is inadequate and imperfect. It is full of sor- 
row, and it is everlastingly warring against the 
world, even against its own members inasmuch as they 
too are of the world. “No religion is so completely 
filled as Christianity with the yeast of idealization, 
none does so take up the challenge of an everlasting 
war to purify the actual, a task which never can be 


53 On Religion, pp. 222ff., 238ff. Cf. below pp. 155-157. 
54 On Religion, pp. 246, 248. 


INTRODUCTION liti 


consummated.”°* “And hence this religion of religions 
longs to see the ideal forces of Humanity aspiring to 
infinity. From its own life it is ever sending forth 
new variations in the effort to express its essence still 
more purely and completely,’ and “it willingly sees 
other and younger, and, if possible, stronger and more 
beautiful types of religion arise outside of it. It can- 
not find enough ways of expressing its pure devotion 
to all things human. And as nothing is more irrelig- 
ious than to demand a general uniformity among all 
men, so nothing is more unchristian than to seek uni- 
formity in religion. The deity is to be contemplated 
and worshipped in all ways.’’®* For the universe is 
infinite and its life can only be sensed through infinite 
individuation. 

How different this romantic appreciation of the 
great religious traditions is from the single-minded 
allegiance of an undivided faith, by which the devout 
are admonished ever to repeat the words: “I am 
naught, I have naught, I desire naught, but to be in 
Jerusalem.’** By way of contrast, here is the roman- 
ticist desiring to be in Jerusalem, but everywhere else 
at the same time. The latter’s spirituality is the kind 
that generally pervades “modernism,” forward-look- 
ing, backward looking, looking to every side, upward, 
and perhaps sometimes downward. It is a sensitive 
and generous spirituality, but through lack of concen- 
tration, its direction from time to time is apt to be 
determined by extrinsic forces and circumstances. 

This is not the place to discuss the permanent value 
of romantic spirituality in the world’s pantheon of re- 


55 On Religion, p. 243. 
58 On Religion, p. 252. 
57 Walter Hilton, Parable of the Pilgrim. 


liv SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


ligions. There will always be some who prefer an- 
other type of religious sentiment and still others who 
prefer none at all. But for those who are interested 
in romantic religion the latter half of Schleiermacher’s 
life, the fate of his ideas and their influence, contains 
some illuminating experience. For a brief while after 
the publication of the Speeches on Religion he and his 
fellow romanticists indulged the hope of founding a 
new religion or at least of inaugurating a new religious 
awakening. The circumstances of the time seemed fav- 
orable to change; there was the example of the French 
revolution. But almost at once these grandiose ambi- 
tions were deflected by the complications of more per- 
sonal romantic longings. Schlegel and Schleiermacher 
both fell in love with married women; Schleiermacher 
refrained from forcing his lady’s hand (and several 
years later she finally rejected him definitely) ,°* but 
Schlegel eloped with Dorothea Veit. Although Schlei- 
ermacher did not approve, he defended his friend 
against the storm of criticism that followed, thereby 
drawing upon himself some of its force. The strained 
personal relations that ensued led to the dispersal of 
the romantic group. Schlegel went to Jena, while the 
church found a position for Schleiermacher as court- 
preacher at Stolpe, a small town in Pommerania.*® 
Here he stayed from 1802 to 1804, and during his exile 
turned his attention to exacting scholarship, continu- 
ing the translation of Plato’s Dialogues which he had 
begun with Schlegel, and writing out the Outlines of a 


58 See below pp. 79ff. and note f. 

59 Dilthey, pp. 509-542 describes these Trennungen. And the 
New Edition by Herm. Mulert, 1922, adds a very valuable sec- 
st (N. E. pp. 552-861) on Schleiermacher’s life from 1800- 
1807. 


INTRODUCTION lv 


Critique of Previous Ethical Theory which he had long 
contemplated. This latter work shows little trace of 
romantic idealism; it is a stiff piece of pure logical 
analysis from beginning to end. (See Appendix, pp. 
132-134) .®° 

These scholarly labors qualified Schleiermacher for 
an academic post and in 1804 he accepted a professor- 
ship and chaplaincy at his former university of Halle. 
Here he preached and taught both philosophy and the- 
ology for about two years, at the end of which time 
the university had to be closed because of the French 
invasion of 1806. This invasion proved the weakness 
of the old regime in Prussia, bringing disintegration 
and suffering in its train, but it likewise raised new 
hopes of rebuilding life on a higher spiritual as well 
as material level. These were the days of Fichte’s 
Speeches to the German Nation, the days of his great- 
est influence as a spiritual leader. A new university 
was created at Berlin to which the foremost spirits 
of the day were to be drawn and which was to radiate 
its influence throughout a new society. To this uni- 
versity Schleiermacher was invited to come as head 
of the theological faculty and in 1810 he took up his 
post there, and outlined his program for theological 
study. His Kurze Darstellung des Theologischen Stu- 
diums (1811) in its essential elements has been the 
educational program of progressive Protestant semi- 
naries ever since. (See Appendix, pp. 149ff.) His dis- 
tinguished academic post accompanied a position 01 


60 The brief sketch of Schleiermacher’s life after 1800 given 
above is supplemented by a more detailed consideration of his 
later writings in the Appendix, pp. 115ff. below. See Preface, 
p. vi. For the second half of Schleiermacher’s life see also 
Dilthey’s article in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. 


lvi SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


prominence in the church. In 1808 he had been called 
to the important pulpit of the Dreifaltigkeits Kirche. 

In the pulpit, as in the academy, Schleiermacher 
worked with the liberals. In ecclesiastical politics he 
tried to secure that most difficult of all arrangements, 
the widest possible cooperation of all parties on a basis 
of free independent expression. He was bitterly op- 
posed to legal coercion in religious matters. (“Away 
with every union between church and state. That 
remains my Cato’s utterance to the end or until I see 
the union actually destroyed.’”’)* But in 1817 the 
Reformed and Lutheran Confessions were finally 
joined, not as Schleiermacher had hoped, by free 
agreement of the parties, but by pressure from the 
state. As the Metternich reaction intensified, Schleier- 
macher found himself in difficulties with the govern- 
ment because of his liberal views. A charge of “dem- 
agogic agitation” was issued against him and Arndt. 
Political reaction meant religious orthodoxy too. The 
growing influence of Hengstenberg, the disciplining of 
De Wette in 1819, meant the ascendency of every- 
thing against which Schleiermacher was contending, 
the rigid control of the church by the orthodox party 
in alliance with the reactionary state. 

The times now needed a philosophy that took hold 
of political and social realities. The romanticists pos- 
sessed considerable historical sense, but they used 
their knowledge of history in the service of individual 
rather than of social imagination, and such freely im- 
aginative idealism, which had been the spirit of the 
times only a few years before, was now gradually rel- 
egated to the academy, while events took an inde- 


61 On Religion, p. 174. 


INTRODUCTION lvii 


pendent course. In the philosophic works of his later 
years Schleiermacher, for instance, seems largely to be 
engaged in the academic exercise of giving his ideas 
a more systematic formulation. (See Appendix, pp. 
130ff.) Naturally, however, he sensed the new sit- 
uation, and tried also to do justice in his later theory 
to the problems of institutionalized spirituality. But 
Hegel alone of all the idealists impressed men by his 
profound sense of organized human life, and so Hegel 
succeeded the romanticists as the philosophic oracle of 
the hour. 

Schleiermacher’s philosophy in his later years was 
no longer an expression of the movement of things 
as a whole, such as it had been for a brief while at the 
turn of the century. But in one department of thought 
he continued to reap a fine harvest from his early 
planting. Wi6ith impressive accumulative result he de- 
veloped his philosophy of religion and applied it to 
the interpretation of Christian history and theology. 
His life became more and more deeply and signifi- 
cantly bound up with the life of the Protestant church. 
The results of his exegetical and historical researches 
have long since been superseded in many respects, 
but only by the more general application of those 
critical methods, which he was among the first to 
adopt. In the realm of Christian theology, too, new 
ideas have become current since he published his great 
work on The Christian Faith (according to Evangeli- 
cal Doctrine) in 1821. But the underlying principle of 
this work, that systems of theology are to be under- 
stood as symbolizing religious experience, has never 
commanded wider respect among all the various classes 


82 Cf. below pp. 146-149. 


Ivill SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


of men interested in the interpretation of religion than 
today. (See Appendix, pp. 162-165.) 

The question has often been raised whether Schlei- 
ermacher’s theory of religion as developed in his later 
systematic works is consistent with his earlier ideas 
in the Speeches on Religion. There is a very funda- 
mental difference between the two that can scarcely 
be described in terms of consistency or inconsistency. 
Considered as purely theoretical works, the earlier and 
later writings are on the whole harmonious, but the 
important point of difference is that the earlier writ- 
ings were not intended as purely theoretical, like the 
later ones, but as something more. In them the larger 
purpose was active, not merely to interpret, but also to 
create, or at least to move men to create religion, and 
it is by the standard of this, his highest ambition that 
Schleiermacher should be judged. To interpret relig- 
ion is one thing, and to create it quite another. Schlet- 
ermacher’s reputation as a philosopher of religion is 
good, but what of his rank as a prophet? 

For a brief moment, on the threshold of the nine- 
teenth century, he and his fellow-romanticists had 
been in touch with the spirit of things as a whole. 
They caught the thrill of the larger world into which 
humanity was moving, and welcomed the promise of 
a richly varied existence with an enthusiasm that sets 
them apart in the history of human thought. For 
mankind has usually sought security in some perma- 
nent or stable fact of life, and has rarely indulged an 
interest, with such complete abandon as the romanti- 
cists showed, in all the variations of experience. Since 
1800 we have come to know something of the pain and 
difficulty involved in the differentiation and complex- 


INTRODUCTION lix 


ity of modern life, so that the emotional excitement 
of the romanticists may appear somewhat visionary 
and out of touch with reality. We are impressed with 
the need of understanding as well as of feeling the 
qualities of our culture. And yet, we should be loath 
to forego the opportunities for individual development 
or the variety of values that contemporary life affords. 
The ideals of romanticism are still in many respects 
vital, although the classic philosophies of romanticism 
are felt to be inadequate, especially as the lyric enthu- 
siasm of a hundred years ago will not suffice to realize 
these ideals under present conditions of human exist- 
ence. 

But can the pursuit and appreciation of the varied 
goods of life ever give an absolute satisfaction akin to 
that sought in the great religions? Can it receive an ade- 
quate social anchorage and an adequate ideal expres- 
sion? This is the fundamental question raised by the 
strength and weakness of the romantic movement, and 
the life of the modern spirit is really at stake in it. For 
we do not wish to give up the variety of values which 
we enjoy, and at the same time we know that mere 
wishing and appreciation will not maintain them for us, 
because imperious forces and circumstances play havoc 
with us when not understood and controlled. We can- 
not return to the mediaeval faith, or be satisfied with 
any Other religious view that in the light of a wider 
horizon seems to set up a one-sided ideal; neither can 
we be content with “modernism” in the sense of a 
mere recognition of other values, or a romantic tast- 
ing of them. Such modernism like romanticism is too 
optimistic about the basis on which the life of the spirit 
rests. It takes for granted and accepts as a matter 


lx SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


of course dispositions and powers that have been 
slowly built up by constructive effort, just as romanti- 
cism took for granted the solid foundations laid for 
modern life and thought in the seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth centuries. Without the gradual accumulation 
of varied goods and powers by constructive thought 
and discipline, the romantic appreciation of a many- 
sided and rich existence would not have been possible, 
nor can the possibility be maintained without the trans- 
formation of appreciation from something fluidly 
romantic into something more organic and structural. 


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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


WHEN THIS LITTLE BOOK went out of print, I did 
not wish to refuse the publication of a second edition. 
In part, because I am indebted to the book for attract- 
ing readers of generous spirit in a way I had hardly 
expected, and for bringing me highly esteemed 
friends.* And then also because such a refusal to re- 
print might be misinterpreted as a recantation. Let 
me, therefore, render thanks to these pages by grant- 
ing them a new lease of life, at the same time explain- 
ing that all the sentiments expressed in them are still 
my own as fully as any portrait drawn in early life 
can and should resemble one’s older self. But in re- 
editing the book I must confess that the difficulties in- 
volved in touching up a work like this, to say nothing 
of revising it, are all too great, because there is dan- 
ger, on the one hand, of clouding its essential, inner 
truth by an unconscious infusion of characteristics of 
a later period, or on the other hand, of disturbing 
friendly readers by changes which might appear arbi- 
trary. For these reasons I prefer to republish it with 
all its imperfections, and except in small matters of 
expression I have made only a few changes noted 
down soon after its first appearance, because they 
seemed to clarify some obscurities and to prevent mis- 


* Among them Ehrenfried v. Willich, whose widow Schleier- 
macher married. See Letters, v. 1, p. 266ff. E. v. Willich, 
S.’s stepson, has given an interesting picture of the family life 
in Aus Schletermacher’s Hause. 


4 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


understandings. Therefore, if anyone finds fault with 
the manner in which the book is written rather than 
with its content, let him not attribute the defect to me 
as I am now, but rather to the man I was when this 
book first appeared. But if there be others who find 
the very spirit of the book uncongenial, and who are 
unwilling or unable to distinguish between a man’s 
ideal self and his mere. appearance, nothing need 
hinder them from serving up again the flat and taste- 
less ridicule heard here and there ten years ago.* 


Dr. Fr. SCHLEIERMACHER. 
BERLIN, April, 1810. 


_*D. F. Strauss’s Charakteristiken und Kritiken, p. 27, ques- 
tions the effectiveness of this apology and accepts Schleier- 
macher’s invitation to criticize the Soliloquies. 


PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 


IN PUBLISHING this third edition of my little book I 
refer the reader again to the justification given in the 
preface to the second edition, and shall attempt only 
a few additional words for the benefit of those who 
may have really misinterpreted what the book aims 
to accomplish. Since the second edition was published, 
an intimate friend of long acquaintance made the fol- 
lowing very pertinent statement. The life of every 
individual, as it appears to others, suggests at one time 
his essential, archetypal self, and at another his dis- 
torted self. Now only when following out the first 
suggestion, that toward the archetypal self, can self- 
examination yield results fit for publication and com- 
municable to others; introspection in the other direc- 
tion, toward the distorted self, is soon lost too deep 
in those recesses of the private life which, as some 
sage has already said, a man had best conceal even 
from himself. He who passes over this latter type of 
introspection, as was attempted in this book, while 
communicating his findings in the former, obviously 
with the special intention of locating the points of dif- 
ference between archetypal selves, is completely mis- 
interpreted if he is censured for seeing himself only 
in a favorable light, and for being more ridiculous 
than Narcissus, in that he goes so far as to publish 


6 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


for the whole wide world to read the language of in- 
fatuation which he has addressed to his own likeness. 
Moreover, to this purpose of the book can be attributed 
the fact that self-examination assumes in it a purely 
ethical form, and that what is in a narrow sense relig- 
ous should nowhere be prominent therein.* But I 
did not intend this to favor the view that religious in- 
trospection must tend only in the opposite direction 
of contemplating man’s distorted, fallen self.f On the 
contrary, it has long been my plan to refute this one- 
sided conception also, and to supplement this book 
by a similar series of religious meditations. But thus 
far time has not permitted me to do so.t 


BERLIN, December, 1821. S; 


* Cf. pp. xlix, 22, 127, for Schleiermacher’s conception of the 
relations between the ethical and the religious. In a fundamental 
sense the Soliloquies concern both. 

+ This refers to the pietist revival (1821) of meditation upon 
human sinfulness. (Schiele, p. 95.) 

{ The plan was never carried out. 


SOLILOQUIES 


i 
NEW OY EARS 'GIRE 


BERLIN 1800 
PUBLISHED BY CHRISTIAN SIGISMUND SPENER 


OFFERING 


O choicer? gift can any man give to another 
than his spirit’s intimate converse with itself.* 
For this affords the highest? boon there is, a clear 
and undistorted insight into a free being. No gift is 
more enduring, for nothing can destroy the satisfac- 
tion, which such an insight has once granted you,’ 
and its intrinsic truth assures your love so that you 
delight in beholding it again. None is surer proof 
against the lust and guile of others, since it arouses 
no desire that is not spiritual, and offers no second- 
ary attractions that could lead to its abuse. If any- 
one stands aloof, and looks askance at this precious 
treasure, attributing to it absurd features which 
your honest eye does not detect, let not such idle 
mockery rob you of your joy. Heed it as little as I 
shall let myself repent of having shared with you 
that which I had to give. Come, take the gift, ye who 
can understand my spirit’s thought!* May my feel- 
ings here intoned be an accompaniment to the mel- 
ody within yourselves, and may the shock which 
passes through you at the contact with my spirit, 
become a quickening impulse in your life. 
[ Note: The numerical notes refer to changes made in the 


text by Schleiermacher himself in the second and third editions. 
These changes are given on pp. 104-111.] 


* That the Soliloquies virtually do represent Schleiermach- 
er’s inner conversation during years of growth I have explained 
on p. xl (Introduction). Pp. xli-xlvi give a brief analysis 
of the work. 


J 
REFLECTION 


HE outer world in its eternal laws as well as 

in its most ephemeral appearances, like a magic 
mirror, doubtless reflects our highest and innermost 
nature in a thousand tender and sublime simili- 
tudes.* But this happy imagery, the delicate charm 
of which should enliven and inform dull sensibilities 
as it plays upon them, is of no avail to such as disre- 
gard the plain demands of their own deepest feel- 
ings and do not hear the subdued sighing of their 
abused spirit. The true significance and inner pur- 
port of outward relations escapes them, even of 
such as their own genius has contrived and must 
repeatedly bring to light. Thus (in the reckoning 
of the calendar),+ we divide the infinite line of time 
into equal portions, at points determined arbitrarily 
by the most trivial circumstances, having no sig- 
nificance in our lives and determining nothing, since 
nought proceeds at an exact pace, not the struc- 
ture of our work, nor the round of our emotions, 
nor the play of our destiny. And yet these arbitrary 


* Cf. pp. 16ff. for Schleiermacher’s view of the outer world 
in its relations to spirit. One of the recurring ideas is that the 
former mirrors (“symbolizes,” p. 16, 146) the latter. The play 
upon the word “Reflection” (title) is significant and character- 
istic. 

+ The parenthetical phrase has been supplied by the trans- 
lator. See note * on p. 12. 


REFLECTION 11 


divisions are meant to be something more than an 
aid to the chronologer or a feast for the mathemati- 
cian; to everyone they must inevitably suggest seri- 
ous 1eflections on the possibility of dividing life. But 
few are they who penetrate beneath the surface of 
this profound allegory, and understand to what 
truth this very natural® suggestion points. 

The average individual recognizes nothing but 
his transient existence, and its irresistible decline 
- from sunny heights into a dread night of annihila- 
tion. He thinks some hidden hand draws the thread 
of his life along, alternately weaving and unweav- 
ing a web of sensations and ideas, pulling it to- 
gether now loosely, now tightly, and that nothing 
more exists. The swifter the succession of our 
thoughts and feelings, the richer their variety, the 
more harmonious and intimate their combination, 
the more glorious and perfect a work of art our life 
is believed to be. And could men also explain in 
mechanistic fashion the entire nexus of such a life,® 
they would regard themselves as having reached 
the summit of humanity and of self-comprehension. 
But in thinking thus they mistake the reflected im- 
age of their activity for the whole’ activity itself, 
those outer contact-points, wherein the energies of 
the self meet with external things, for their inmost 
being, they mistake the atmosphere for the world 
about which it has formed.* How could such men, 
(watching the old year out and awaiting the new), 
with reflections no deeper than these, understand 
the challenge implicit in this very act of dividing 


* Cf. pp. 15-18. 


12 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


time?* The point which cuts a line is not part of 
that line; it is related to the Infinite as truly and 
more immediately than to the line, and anywhere 
along the line you can place such a point.— Just 
so, the moment in which you cut the course of life 
and make a new division, should be no portion of 
your temporal existence; you should regard it other- 
wise, and in it become conscious of your immedi- 
ate relations to the Infinite and Eternal ;? and when- 
ever you will, such a moment can be yours. Seeing 
herein a sublime intimation of the Divine in me, I 
rejoice in its invitation to an immortal life outside 
the realm of time and free from its harsh laws! But 
those, who do not recognize a call to this higher 
life, while immersed in transient thought and feel- 
ing, will equally fail to apprehend it when, without 
really knowing what they are about, they resort to 
the measurement of time for the sake of marking 
off periods in their mundane existence. Better that 
they never even suspected the truth than that their 
vain energetic bustle should so painfully disconcert 
me when I strive to obey the divine invitation! 
Doubtless they too demand a point in time, which 
shall mean more than a merely transient present, 
but they have not the wit to apprehend it as Eter- 


* The Soliloquics are a “new year’s gift” (see title-page, 
p. 7). The romanticists heralded the turn of the century and 
the advent of 1800 as the dawn of a new era. Moreover, 
Schleiermacher originally developed some of the themes of the 
Soliloquies in a new year’s sermon of 1792 (republished in 
Schiele, p. 149). These circumstances help to explain the prom- 
inence given in the text above to the thought of the changing 
year and the reflections it arouses. In the interest of this 
thought, the parenthetical phrase above and another on p. 10, 
have been supplied by the translator. 


7 See pp. xxvii-xxviii in re Schleiermacher and mathematics ! 


REFLECTION 13 


nity. Often for a moment, sometimes perhaps for 
an hour or even for a day,* they will actually ab- 
solve themselves from the obligations of assiduous 
industry, from the eager quest for knowledge and 
pleasure, warned as they needs must be of the 
transiency of their interests, by the reflection that 
the present is ever slipping into the past as speed- 
ily as it emerges out of the future. There follows 
disillusionment and disgust with all this useless pur- 
suit of novel enjoyments, perceptions, or activities ; 
they sit down on the bank of the river of life, and 
with a helpless smile let fall their tears into the danc- 
ing waves below. Like barbarous savages who 
kill the wives, the children, or the slaves beside a 
father’s grave,® so at the close of a departing year 
they sacrifice the holiday, dissipating it in empty 
imaginings, a thoroughly vain oblation. 
Meditation and contemplation are without profit 
for him who does not know’? the inner life of spirit. 
Let him not struggle to escape from temporal 
things, who recognizes nothing timeless in himself. 
For whither should he mount from the stream of 
time, and what could he win save useless suffer- 
ing and a feeling of annihilation? One man bal- 
ances the joys and sorrows of the past, seeking to 
focus upon a single image, under the lens of mem- 
ory, the faint light that still glimmers out of the dis- 
tance which he has traversed. Another reviews his 
achievements; it pleases him to recall his arduous 
struggle against the world and fate; and happy that 
matters have not turned out worse, he notes here 


* Even for a day,” as in the case of the New Year’s Day, 


aes which the whole paragraph is oriented. See note on 
0.082) 


14 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


and there some monument to his effort, fashioned 
out of the stuff of a reality indifferent to his aims, 
though, of course, it falls far short of his intentions. 
Still a third takes stock of his learning, and struts 
with pride because of his much increased and well- 
appointed store of knowledge, delighted in his 
power to contain it all. What puerile attempts of 
an idle conceit are these! The first no longer thinks 
of the cares which his imagination raised for him, 
and which his memory blushes to preserve; the 
second turns his back upon the world and fate, re- 
fusing altogether to acknowledge the support they 
gave him; the third does not take into account the 
old knowledge that was crowded out by the new, 
the thoughts that thinking excluded, and the impres- 
sions that were sacrificed to learning. Thus the 
reckoning is never right. And if it were, how deeply 
pained I am to think that men can imagine this to 
be self-contemplation, or call this knowledge of one- 
self! How miserably their much glorified business 
of self-examination ends! Imagination fixes on a 
faithful portrait of the past, projects it with lavish 
embellishments upon the empty canvass of the im- 
mediate future, and yet looks back with many a 
sigh toward the original. The ultimate gain of such 
introspection reduces itself to the idle hope of a 
better future, and the vain lament that bygone pleas- 
ures are no more, and that life’s substance as it 
wanes from day to day gives warning that its bright 
flame will soon expire. With such idle wishes and 
vain complaints Time grievously brands her slaves 
who would escape; the best are like unto the worst 
for she will just as surely overtake the best event- 


REFLECTION 15 


ually. Whoever sees and recognizes only the out- 
ward spectacle of life instead of the spiritual activ- 
ity that secretly stirs his inmost being, who merely 
constructs a picture of life and its vicissitudes from 
impressions gathered far and near instead of fac- 
ing his essential self, will always remain a slave of 
Time and Necessity. All his thoughts and feelings 
bear their stamp, are still in their possession, and 
he may never set foot within the sacred precincts 
of Freedom, even though he thinks he has attained 
self-consciousness. For in the image which he con- 
structs of himself, this very self becomes something 
external, like all else, and everything in such an 
image is determined by external circumstances. 
What he sees in it, the thoughts and feelings that 
it arouses, depend alike on the content of the 
moment and on his particular condition of life. If 
he has looked for nought but the gratification of ani- 
mal sense, he will judge life rich or poor according 
to the number of agreeable moments it contains, 
and the immediate satisfaction which he takes in 
such a retrospect will depend on whether the great- 
est pleasures™! came first or last. If he wanted to 
create and to enjoy beauty, he will court the judg- 
ment passed upon him, and is dependent further- 
more upon the conditions and materials that fate has 
provided for his work. In like dependence is he who 
sought to signalize his life with benefactions. They 
all must bow beneath the sceptre of Necessity, and 
bear the curse of transiency, which permits nothing 
to endure. 

Their sense of life is like my mood when some 
artfully constructed harmony of many _ notes 


16 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


has struck my ear'® but is now silent; the imagina- 
tion plagues itself with a meagre echo, and the soul 
yearns for that which will not return. Life indeed 
is but a fleeting harmony rising from the contact 
of the temporal and the eternal, but man is a per- 
manent creation,* an undying object of contempla- 
tion. Only*® his innermost activity, wherein his 
true nature abides, is free,2®° and in contemplating it, 
I feel myself to be upon the holy ground of Free- 
dom, far from every debasing limitation. I must fix 
my eyes upon my true self, if each moment is not 
to slip away as merely so much time, instead of 
being grasped as an element of Eternity, and trans- 
muted into a higher and freer life.” 

He alone enjoys freedom and eternity who 
knows!® what man is and what the world is,?® who 
has reached clarity in solving the great enigma of 
their differentiation and their interaction, a riddle 
in whose dark and ancient mazes thousands still 
are caught, and needs must follow servilely the most 
deceptive illusions, because their own light has 
failed them. What the multitude calls the world, I 
call man, and what they call man, I call the world.* 
To them the world is every primary,”° and the spirit 
but a humble guest upon it, uncertain of his place 
and powers. To me the spirit is the first and only 
being.*? for what I take to be the world, is the fairest 
creation of spirit, a mirror in which it is reflected. 
In awe and fear the multitude cower before the in- 
finitely vast and ponderous masses of the material 


*In this passage (pp. 16-17) Schleiermacher’s revisions of 
1810 are more fundamental than elsewhere. The change is from 
an extreme to a more modified “idealistic” idiom. Cf. pp. 
128-130 and see notes on pp. 104-105. 


REFLECTION 17 


world, amid which man appears so small and insig- 
nificant. To me all this is but the giant body com- 
mon to Humanity, belonging to us even as an indi- 
vidual’s body does to him, made possible through 
Humanity alone, to which it is given in order that 
the human spirit may master it and be revealed 
therein. The creative freedom of Humanity 1s exer- 
cized upon this body, to sense all its pulsations, to 
mold and transmute all its features into organs of 
human life, and to delineate all its parts with the 
spirit’s regal presence.* Is there indeed a body 
without a spirit? Does not the body exist only 
because and insofar as the spirit requires it and is 
conscious thereof??? All those feelings that seem 
to be forced upon me by the material world are in 
reality my own free doing ;?* nothing is a mere effect 
of that world upon me, every real influence is ex- 
erted by me upon it;?* that world is not, in fact, 
distinct from me, nor antithetic to me. For this 
very reason I do not choose to dignify it with the 
name of world, a great word implying omnipres- 
ence and omnipotence. The only reality that I deem 
worthy to be called a world is the eternal com- 
munity of spiritual beings, their influence upon each 
other, their mutual development, the sublime har- 
mony of freedom. This infinite totality of spiritual 
beings is the only reality that I recognize over 
against my finite and individual self. This reality 
alone I suffer to transform and shape the surface of 
my being; this heaven alone shall mold me. Here, 


and here only is the province of necessity. My activ- 
_* This description of the spirit’s functions anticipates the dis- 
tinction made in Schleiermacher’s later systematic works be- 
tween “organizing” and “symbolizing” activity. See pp. 146-147. 


18 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


ity itself is free, not so my function in the world,”° 
for that obeys eternal laws. Freedom finds its limit 
in another freedom, and whatever happens freely 
bears marks of limitation and community. Yes, holy 
Freedom, in all reality thou art first! It is thou 
that dwellest within me and in everyone. Outside 
us is Necessity, a chord determined by the harmo- 
nious clash of various inner liberties that thus re- 
veal themselves. Within me I can behold nought 
but Freedom, necessity reigns not in my doing, but 
in the reflection thereof, in the perceptions I have?® 
of the world which I help to create in holy”? associ- 
ation with all other beings. To this realm of neces- 
sity belongs whatever I have produced in working 
on a common foundation with others; such produc- 
tions are my share in the joint creation that ex- 
presses our inner thought. To necessity belong also 
the rising and falling tides of emotion, the train of 
images that passes before us, and everything that 
changes in our souls with time. Such images and 
feelings are a token that the spirit and the world 
have met in harmony, ever renewing the kiss of 
friendship between them in a different manner. The 
Dance of Hours thus proceeds, melodious and har- 
monious, according to a necessary rhythm. But 
Freedom plays the melody,”® selects the key, and all 
the subtle modulations are her work. For these pro- 
ceed from an inner determination and from the 
individual’s unique disposition. 

And so, Freedom, you are for me the soul and 
principle of all things. When I withdraw into myself 
to contemplate you, my eyes are lifted from the° 
realm of time, and my vision free from every re- 


REFLECTION 19 


striction of Necessity. Every oppressive feeling of 
bondage disappears, my spirit discovers its creative 
nature, the light of God begins to shine upon me, 
banishing far hence the mists in which enslaved 
humanity strays in error. The self revealed in my 
meditations is no longer a creature of fate or for- 
tune; the hours of happiness I have deserved, the 
results achieved by my efforts, and whatever I have 
actually put into execution, all these are of the 
world; they are not myself. If my activity is de- 
signed to bring humanity into possession of its 
massive body, the material world, giving this body 
life and organic fitness, or by artful imitation fash- 
ioning it in the image of reason and mind,* the 
extent to which I find the earth already suited to 
my purpose, the ease with which its crude mass 
can be molded and brought under the control of 
spirit, is but?® a sign of the dominion which Free- 
dom has already exercised over it in the person 
of others. It indicates what still remains to be done, 
but furnishes no measure of what I do.*° My view 
of my conduct and picture of my whole being is 
unchanged; I am no better or no worse in my own 
eyes, whether external circumstances are propitious 
or unfavorable to my activity.*?. I do not discover 
in myself the slave, for whom the world or iron- 
bound necessity decides what he may become. And 
just as pain does not easily deprive a strong and 
healthy soul of control over the physical body, so 
too I sense my free dominion over the material 
world, regardless of whether the consequences be 


* This passage (pp. 19-20) on the two possible aims of action 
is further elucidated by the theory of a fundamental dichotomy 
of human types explained on pp. 34-37 below. 


s 


20 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


pleasurable or painful. The inner life reveals itself 
alike in either case, and its creation is an act of spir- 
itual freedom. If the purpose of my actions is to 
shape what is human in me,* giving it a particular 
form and definite characteristics, thus contributing 
to the world by my own self-development and offer- 
ing to the community of free spiritual beings the 
unique expression of my-own freedom, then I see 
no difference whether or not my efforts are at once 
combined with those of others and some objective 
result®? immediately appears to greet me as part 
of the world-order. My efforts have not been vain, 
if only I myself acquire greater individuality and 
independence, for through such self-development I 
also contribute to the world, no matter how soon 
or late the actions of others combine with my own 
to produce some new, visible result. Unlike those 
who have not discovered the inner life, and who 
think to find themselves in particulars of the out- 
ward life, I am never depressed by self-contempla- 
tion, nor need I ever lament a broken will or a de- 
feated purpose. 

Having clearly differentiated between the inner 
and the outer, I know who I am, and I find myself 
only in the inner life,t in external things I see only 
the world. My spirit knows how to distinguish 


both, and does not fluctuate between the two, as is 


* See note on p. 19. 

7 “TI find myself only in the inner life.’ The point of this 
emphasis on self-analysis as the key to the meaning of life 
(cf. pp. 118-119) lies in Schleiermacher’s repudiation of all 
attempts to find that meaning in some law, principle, or power 
outside of man’s own purposes. In his earliest philosophical 
essays he criticizes Kant’s theology and his conception of the 
categorical imperative from this standpoint. See pp. xxxii, 117, 
and Schiele, pp. 97-98. 


REFLECTION Po | 


common, in unenlightened confusion. Hence I also 
know where Freedom is to be sought and the sacred 
sense of its presence, that ever refuses to bless him 
whose vision rests solely upon the outward life and 
work of man. However deeply such a one may in- 
volve himself in endless mazes of speculation, turn- 
ing the problem over and over, and however effec- 
tive he may be in action, the conception of Freedom 
is beyond the reach of his thought. He follows not 
only the actual indications of necessity, but in slav- 
ish and superstitious submission to his false phil- 
osophy he must look for them and believe them to 
be present, even where he does not see them. Free- 
dom seems to him nothing but an illusion, spread 
like a veil over a hidden and uncomprehended neces- 
sity.** Moreover, such an empiricist, whose action 
and whose thought look outward, sees everything 
as finite and particular. He cannot imagine him- 
self as other than a sum of fleeting appearances, 
each of which supplants and cancels the other, so 
that it is impossible to conceive them as a whole. 
A complete picture of his being thus eludes him in 
a thousand contradictions. Indeed, in the realm 
of outward behavior particulars are often contradic- 
tory; action destroys passivity, thought supplants 
sensation, and contemplation forces the will to be 
at rest. But within the spirit all is one, each action 
is but supplementary to another, in each the other 
also is preserved.* Thus self-contemplation lifts me 
far above the finite, which may be seen entire as a 
determined series with definite limits. No action 
transpires within me, that I can truly regard as iso- 


Y Gf “pps 71-72: 


22 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


lated, and none of which I could say that it consti- 
tutes a whole by itself. Each of my acts reveals 
the whole of my being,** undivided, each of its man- 
ifestations goes with the rest; there are no limits 
at which introspection can halt, it must ever remain 
unfinished, if it is to remain true to life. Nor can 
I divine my own being in its entirety without con- 
templating Humanity, and determining my rank and 
place in its domain. And who can think of Human- 
ity without being lost in thought of the pure spirit’s 
infinite realm and nature ??>* 

It is this higher order of self-contemplation, and 
this alone that makes me capable of meeting the 
sublime summons that man live not only as a mortal 
in the realm of time, but also as immortal in the 
domain of eternity, that his life be not only 
earthly but also divine. The stream of time bears 
with it in its course my mortal deeds; ideas and 
feelings change, I can not hold fast a single one. 
The scene of life, as I picture it, hurries by; upon 
the next inevitable wave the stream will carry me 
on toward something new. But as often as I turn 
my gaze inward upon my inmost self, I am at once 
within the domain of eternity. I behold the spirit’s 
action,®® which no world can change, and no time 
can destroy, but which itself creates both world and 
time.t Nor do I require the challenge of that spe- 

* This is one of several passages in the Soliloquies, suggest- 
ing that contemplation of the individual self, which yields the 
guiding principle of ethics, leads naturally into meditation upon 
universal being, the essence of religion. Cf. pp. 24, 140. I 
have tried to explain Schleiermacher’s conception of the rela- 


tion between individual and universe, ethics and religion on 
pp. xlix, 127, of the Introduction and Appendix. 


+ Cf. On Religion, pp. 70ff. 


REFLECTION 23 


cial hour, in which one year gives way to another, 
to arouse me to this appreciation of the eternal, and 
to open the eyes of the spirit, closed perhaps®’ in 
slumber though the heart beats and the limbs are 
active. Who once has tasted it will want to lead 
the divine life continually; every act should be ac- 
companied by an insight into spiritual mysteries, 
and in every moment man can dwell beyond the 
moment, in the higher world. 

Of course, wise-men say:* to live is one thing, 
and to lose oneself in the ultimate sources and high- 
est reaches of thought®* is another. Content your- 
self modestly with one of them, for while the pass- 
age of time keeps you busy with the affairs of the 
world, you can not also contemplate the inmost 
depths of your being without distraction. Artists 
say that, when you are creating a picture or com- 
posing a poem, the mind must lose itself completely 
in its work, and must not reflect upon its own be- 
havior. Nevertheless, dare to try, my soul, in spite 
of these reasonable warnings! Press forward toward 
your own goal, which may be different from that of 
artists and sages., Man can do more than he sup- 
poses; yet even when he strives toward the highest, 
he can but achieve in part. If.a sage’s thought, even 
in its most intimate®® and profound reaches, can be 
an external force of influence and guidance in the 
world, then why should not an outward act, of what- 
ever nature, at the same time imply its own inward 
consideration?* If the divine source of all art and 


* “Wise-men.” This, too, is probably a thrust at Fichte, be- 
cause of his contention that a certain antithesis ultimately re- 
mains between “life” and “philosophy.” (Schiele, p. 99.) 

+ Cf. pp. 34-37. 


24 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


poetry is spiritual introspection, and if the spirit 
finds within its own being all that it can express in 
its immortal creations, why should not every crea- 
tive act of artist or poet, being but the expression 
of what is within him involve self-contemplation? 
Divide not your being, my soul, it is a perma- 
ment whole that cannot forego its activity nor the 
knowledge thereof without self-destruction!* Let 
your influence be everywhere felt, and accomplish all 
that you can; follow the lead of your natural limi- 
tations and cultivate every means of spiritual asso- 
ciation; bring out what is individual in you, and 
place the impress of your spirit on all that is about 
you; collaborate in the consecrated tasks of man- 
kind, attracting to yourself such spirits as are con- 
genial. But throughout all be ever mindful of your 
inner self, know what you are about, and in what 
character you are acting.*t The idea, by which men 
imagine they have intellectually grasped the Deity, 
a thing they never can do,} has at least the truth of 
a poetic symbol of what humanity should be. The 
spirit sustains its world by the mere fact of its 
being, and the eternal, unchanging activity which 
produces its diverse acts issues from its own free 
will.t Itself unmoved, it contemplates its own activ- 
ity, ever new and ever yet the same; this contem- 
plation is immortality and eternal life, for therein 
the spirit requires nothing but itself,#? and contem- 


plation never lacks its object, nor does the object 
* Ci. pp 28. 


+See p. 137, 140, in re Schleiermacher’s opinion that the 
intellect can not know God. 
t Cf. this passage with the description Schleiermacher gives 


of the God-idea in his systematic philosophical works. See 
below pp. 137, 140, 163. 


REFLECTION 25 


lack the contemplating mind. In such terms men 
have also tried to imagine immortality, but all too 
content with the earthly life they aspire to it only 
after death.* Their mythology is more profound 
than they. In truth, to the sensuous mind an inner 
process can seem but the shadow of an outward 
act, and in such a realm of shadows men have 
placed the soul forever, lamenting*® that the grey 
existence there below affords them but a meagre 
suggestion of their present life. But this spiritual 
life, which scant imagination exiles into subterra- 
nean darkness, is truly of Olympian clarity, and the 
realm of shadows may serve me here on earth as 
archetype of reality. God is thought to be outside 
the world of time, and after death man is to be freed 
forever from temporal limitations in order to be- 
hold and praise the Deity. But even now the spirit 
spans the world of time, Eternity is in the sight 
thereof, and the celestial rapture of immortal choirs. 
Wherefore begin at once your life eternal in the con- 
stant contemplation of your own true being. Be 
not troubled for the future, nor weep for things 
which pass, but take heed lest you lose yourself, 
and weep if you are swept along in the stream of 
time, without carrying heaven within you. 


* Cf. this whole passage with the often-quoted section in the 
“Speeches” (Reden, p. 10, ed. by R. Otto) where Schleiermacher 
says: “Religion remained with me when God and immortality 
vanished before my doubts.” See also pp. xv-xviii, above for the 
biographical background of these ideas. 


II 


SOUNDINGS 


ANKIND is shy of self-analysis, and many 

people tremble slavishly when they can no 
longer dodge the question of what they have done, 
what they have become, and who they really are. 
The thing frightens them; they know not what will 
come of it. It seems to them easier for a man to 
judge another person than himself, and after strict 
self-scrutiny they rather claim the grace of modesty 
in giving themselves the benefit of the doubt. And 
vet it is only wilfullness that hides a person from 
himself ; his judgment cannot err provided he really 
faces himself. But it is just this which people 
neither can nor want to do. The spell of life and of 
the world is upon them, and resolved not to turn 
from that spectacle, all that they discover of them- 
selves is but a vague and delusive reflection.* To 
be sure, I can judge another person only by his acts, 
for I never look upon his inner disposition. I can 
never know at first hand what his purpose actually 
was; I simply compare his deeds with one another, 
and from these I make a precarious inference as to 
his aims and the spirit which moved him. But oh 
the shame of it, that anyone should see himself only 
as one stranger sees another! that anyone should 
remain ignorant of his inner life and even plume 


* Cf. pp. 13-16. 


SOUNDINGS 27 


himself on his supposed shrewdness, if he succeeds 
in grasping the last link of a chain of resolutions 
that issued in overt action, together with the feel- 
ing that attended it and the idea that immediately 
preceded it! How can such a one ever know either 
himself or others? What is to guide him in conjec- 
turing inner realities from external facts, if he does 
not base his judgment on a crucial experience of 
something immediately certain?? The inevitable? 
presentiment of error makes him afraid, the over- 
shadowing suspicion that he is culpable in his error 
oppresses his heart, and his thoughts vacillate in 
terror of that little portion of self-consciousness 
which men still carry with them, generally degraded 
to the role of a harsh disciplinarian, whose voice 
they needs must often hear unwillingly.* 

In truth, men have good cause for anxiety, lest in 
honestly probing the inner motives of their lives, 
they fail to recognize what is truly human? there, 
and see the conscience, which is consciousness of 
true humanity, sadly mutilated. For whoever has 
not scrutinized his previous conduct can give no 
security that in the future he will remember that 
he is a human being, or prove himself worthy of 
the name. If he has once broken the thread of self- 
consciousness, if he has but once abandoned himself 
to those feelings and impressions that he shares 
with brutes,* how can he know whether he has not 


* Three views of conscience are contrasted in what follows: 
(1) the popular view of conscience as “a little portion of self- 
consciousness degraded to the role of a disciplinarian.” (2) 
Fichte’s view: conscience is “consciousness of true humanity,” 
the universal self in the individual self, and (3) Schleiermach- 
er’s Own view: conscience is consciousness of one’s unique place 
in true humanity. Cf. reference in Schiele, p. 99. 


28 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


fallen into sheer brutality? To behold humanity 
within oneself, and never to lose sight of the vision 
when once found, is the only certain means of never 
straying from its sacred precincts.’ This vision is 
the intimate and necessary tie between conduct and 
the perception of truth,* a connection mysterious 
and unintelligible only to fools and men of dull 
sensibility.t A truly human way of acting pro- 
duces a clear consciousness of what is essentially 
human, and this in turn permits of no other behavior 
than such as is worthy of humanity. He who can 
never lift himself to this clear insight is ever the 
sport of vague instinctive premonitions; in vain you 
will undertake to educate and train him. For all his 
ingenuity and for all his bold resolution to force his 
way back into the circle of humanity,® the sacred 
portals will not open. He remains outside on profane 
ground, and he will not escape the pursuit of the 
offended god-head, nor the shameful feeling that he 
is an exile from his true fatherland. It is sheer folly 
and vain trifling to make experiments or to lay 
down rules in the realm of freedom. To be a man 
calls for a single free resolve; he who has taken that 
resolve will always remain one; he who ceases to 
be one has never taken it. 

With proud joy I still recall the time, when I dis- 


*T. E., knowledge of the ideal self is the necessary tie be- 
tween theory and practice. For other statements of Schleier- 
macher’s as to their connection, see pp. 24, 42 

t “Fools . . . dull sensibility.” Cf. Luke, XXIV, 25, “the 
foolish and stow of heart.” 

tCf. pp. 73-74. In the autobiographical passages which 
follow Schleiermacher uses the language of religious awaken- 
ing, particularly the language of German pietism, to describe his 
development. The Introduction (pp. xvii, xxxiii-xxxv) should 
he consulted for some of the facts referred to. 


SOUNDINGS ZY 


covered humanity’? and knew that henceforth I 
should never lose it. The sublime revelation came 
from within; it was not produced by any code of 
ethics or system of philosophy. My long quest 
which neither this nor that would satisfy was 
crowned in one moment of insight; freedom dis- 
solved my dark doubts by a single act. I can affirm 
that since then I have never forsaken my true self. 
I no longer know the thing that men call conscience ; 
no qualm now reproves me, and I need none to warn 
me. Neither do I strive since then to acquire this 
or that particular virtue, nor am I especially elated 
by some particular act, as are those whose fleeting 
existence is only now and then visited by a dubious 
gleam of innate reason. In quiet tranquillity, in 
utter simplicity I preserve within me an uninter- 
rupted consciousness of humanity’s entire essence.* 
With pleasure and confidence I often survey my 
behavior in all its bearings, being assured that I 
shall find nothing which humanity® must needs re- 
pudiate. If this were all that I exacted of myself, 
I might long since have found inward peace, and 
awaited the end of my existence with perfect com- 
posure! For the certainty I have attained is un- 
shakeable, and I should deem it a culpable piece of 
cowardice, such as is foreign to my nature, were I 
to look to a long life for fuller confirmation of my 
inner conviction, fearing that after all, something 
might yet happen that could plunge me from the 
height of reason into an abyss of sheer brutishness.® 
And yet, I too am still troubled with doubts. For 


* Seven years earlier in an essay on The Value of Life (see 
Appendix, pp. 118-119, and Schiele, pp. 166-198), Schleier- 
macher had been less confident and self-possessed. 


30 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


when I had reached my first goal, another and a 
higher appeared before me, and since it appears 
sometimes clearly and then again dimly, self-scru- 
tiny does not always tell me by what path I can 
approach it, or where I stand with reference to it. 
On these points my judgment wavers. But it is con- 
firmed and gains conviction the more often I return 
to examine myself. And however far I were from 
certainty, I should still search in silence and with- 
out complaint, for stronger than my doubt is my 
great joy in having found out what I should seek, 
and in escaping from the great illusion which de- 
ceives many of the best throughout their lives,* and 
keeps them from soaring to the true summits ot 
humanity.’° For a long time I too was content with 
the discovery of a universal reason; I worshipped 
the one essential being as the highest, and so be- 
lieved that there is but a single right way of acting 
in every situation, that the conduct of all men 
should be alike, each differing from the other only 
by reason of his"! place and station in the world. I 
thought humanity revealed itself as varied only in 
the manifold diversity of outward acts, that man™ 
himself, the individual, was not a being uniquely 
fashioned, but of one substance and everywhere the 
same.** 

Thus is it ever with mankind!** When, turning 
with discontent from the unworthy particularity of 
a sensuous animal life, man wins a realization 
of humanity in its universal aspects and submits 
himself to duty,t he is not straightway capable of 


* He means, for instance, Kant and Fichte, and those who 
think with them that the universal reason is the highest. 
+ Kantian ethics. See note on p. 27, and cf. pp. xxxviii-xl. 


SOUNDINGS 31 


rising to’ the still higher level of individuality in 
growth and in morality, nor to perceive and under- 
stand the unique nature which freedom chooses for 
herself!® in each individual.* Most men rise but mid- 
way, expressing in fact’? only a raw elementary 
humanity, simply because they have not grasped the 
thought of their own higher being. As for me, it is 
this which has taken hold of me. The sense of free- 
dom alone did not content me; it gave no meaning 
to my personality, nor to the peculiar unity of the 
transient stream of consciousness flowing within 
me, which urged me to seek something of higher 
ethical value of which it was the sign. I was not 
satisfied to view humanity in rough unshapen 
masses, inwardly altogether alike, and taking tran- 
sient shape externally only by reason of mutual con- 
tact and friction.*® 

Thus there dawned upon me what is now my 
highest intuition. I saw clearly that each man is 
meant to represent humanity in his own way, com- 
bining its elements uniquely, so that it may reveal 
itself in every mode, and all’® that can issue from 
its womb be made actual in the fullness of unending 
space and time.t This thought alone”? has uplifted 
me, and set me apart from everything common and 
untransformed in my surroundings; it has made of 
me an elect creation of the godhead, rejoicing in a 
unique form and character. The act of freedom,t 
which accompanied this inspiration has assembled 


* This “choice of a nature by freedom” is better described in 
B and C, and also below on page 31-32. BC on p. 106. 


+ Cf. On Religion, pp. 72ff. 


t“The act of freedom”: cf. above p. 28, and note on same 
page. 


oe SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


and integrated the elements of human nature to 
make a unique existence. Had I from that time on 
surveyed the unique in my activity as constantly as 
I have always looked upon the universally human 
aspect of it, had I taken conscious possession of 
every action and limitation which were the conse- 
quence of that initial act of free determination, and 
had I given undisturbed attention to the further de- 
velopment of my unique nature and to each expres- 
sion thereof, I could have no further doubt which 
province of humanity is mine, nor where to seek for 
the common principle which governs both the ex- 
tension and the limitations of my growth. I should 
then have measured accurately the whole content of 
my being, ascertained my boundaries at every point, 
and should have known prophetically what I might 
yet be and might become. But tardily and only with 
great difficulty, does man reach the full knowledge 
of his individuality. He does not always dare to 
look toward it as his ideal, but prefers to turn his 
eyes upon the good which he possesses in common 
with humanity in general. Clinging to this com- 
mon good with love and gratitude, he often doubts 
whether he should again separate his individual self 
from it.*t Confusing the sensuous with the spiritual, 
he fears lest he sink back into that culpably limited 
kind of external personality which preceded his new 
insight, and not until late does he learn to value 
and rightly use his highest privilege. Thus inter- 
rupted the consciousness of individuality must for 
a long time remain vacillating. The most charac- 
teristic efforts of one’s nature often go unobserved, 
and when its limitations are most clearly apparent, 


SOUNDINGS 33 


the eye too readily skims over them, and fastens on 
something universal, where it might have found the 
unique by reason of its very limitations. However, 
I may be content with the way my will has 
conquered inertia, and practice trained my eye 
so that little now escapes it. Whenever I now act 
in keeping with my own spirit and disposition, my 
imagination gives me the clearest proof that I do 
so by free, individual choice, in suggesting to me a 
thousand other ways of acting in a different spirit, 
yet all also consistent with the universal laws of 
humanity. I project myself into a thousand differ- 
ent likenesses in order to behold my own more 
clearly. 

But since the picture of my individuality does 
not yet present itself to me complete in all its feat- 
ures, and is not yet certified by an unbroken con- 
tinuity of clear self-consciousness,* I am not yet 
able to maintain an attitude of unvarying, tranquil 
assurance in my self-contemplation. Often I must 
deliberately review all my efforts and actions, recall 
my history; nor must I disregard the opinions of 
my friends, whom I have gladly suffered to look 
into the depths of my inner life, if they differ from 
my own judgment. It is true that in my own eyes 
I still seem to be the same man I was when my 
higher life began, only more firm and more defined. 
And, indeed, how should a man, having once at- 
tained an independent and unique character, sud- 
denly take on another nature in the very midst of 


* Cf. this “still broken continuity of self-consciousness” with 
the “unbroken consciousness of universal humanity”? mentioned 
above, p. 29. For the autobiographical significance, consult pp. 
xxxi-xli (Introduction) and of course Dilthey. 


34 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


his development and cultivation? How could he 
appropriate another side of human nature without 
having brought the first to its perfection? How 
could he wish to do it? And how could it occur 
without his knowing it??? Either I have never un- 
derstood myself, or I am still the person I believed 
myself to be, and every seeming contradiction, when 
solved by self-scrutiny,. must reveal more clearly 
where and how the various strands of my own being 
are concealed?® and intertwined. 

I am convinced that there is a two-fold vocation 
of men on earth, and it still seems to me to mark a 
great dichotomy in human nature.** To develop 
one’s inner humanity into distinctness, expressing it 
in manifold acts, is one thing, to project it into 
works of art which clearly convey to everyone who 
looks at them whatever their creator intended to 
show, is a totally different thing.* He who is still 
on the lowest level, in the vestibule of uniqueness, 
fearing to limit himself by further decision, may 
seek to combine both courses with the result that 
he will not go far in either direction. Whoso- 
ever would really attain the one must let the other 
go. Not till the very end of life’s development is 
there a bridge from one to the other, and it is open 
only to perfection such as man seldom reaches.+ 
How could I ever be in doubt as to my own choice? 


I have so emphatically eschewed everything that 
* Cf. pp. 19-20. 


7 At one point in his diary (see Dilthey, Appendix, p. 113). 
Schleiermacher says only God reaches it. (Cf. Schiele, p. 102.) 


SOUNDINGS 35 


makes the artist ;* I have so eagerly made my own 
whatever serves the culture of the self, whatever 
hastens and confirms its development. The artist 
is on the alert for whatsoever may serve as sign and 
‘symbol of humanity; he ransacks the treasury of 
language, and builds a world of music from a chaos 
of sound; he searches for a hidden meaning and a 
harmony in nature’s lovely play of colors. In any 
work which he conceives he first investigates the 
effect of every part, and searches out the law and 
structure of the whole, rejoicing more in the artistic 
vessel than in its costly content. Thereafter, ideas 
rise in his mind and shape themselves into new 
artistic creations; secretly he cherishes them in his 
soul; they grow in hidden silence. His productive 
energy knows no rest; he passes from project tu 
execution and from execution to project; through 
constant practice his skill improves steadily; his 
riper judgment gives rein and check unto his fancy. 
This is the way that a creative nature advances 
toward the goal of perfection. 

But all this I learned by observation,?°+ for it 1s 
alien to my thought.2® The humanity represented 
in a work of art stands out much more luminous 
and clear to me than the artist’s artistry. The lat- 


* T have tried to explain the motivation and significance of the 
ensuing passage (pp. 34-41) in the Introduction, pp. xxxviii-xli. 
Schleiermacher keenly felt the lack of creative, artistic power 
for two reasons especially: (1) because his closest friends in 
the “romantic group,” Schlegel et al, had something of it and 
exalted it as the supreme form of spirituality, and (2) because 
he himself believed that art was the true language of religion, 
which was for him the highest. (See Dilthey, p. 289, N. E. 
323. See also On Religion, p. 139.) 


Fie observation” of his artist friends in the romantic circle. 
See pp. xxxviii-xl. 


36 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


ter I get only with effort and later study, and then 
only enough to understand it a little. I like?’ 
nature’s free artistry just as it is; her lovely and 
meaningful signs awaken impressions and ideas in 
me without the impulse to force them into a more 
constricted form of my own creation. I do not in- 
sist upon a perfect treatment of the material in 
which my thought is expressed.?* And therefore I 
refrain from acquiring the utmost skill by practice, 
and when I have once put forth in action what is 
within me, I care not whether the act be often re- 
newed in fairer and clearer fashion. Leisure is my 
dear divinity ;* by her favor man learns*® to under- 
stand and to determine himself. It is in leisure that 
ideas ripen unto power which easily governs all 
when the world calls for action. It follows also 
that I can not work in isolation like the artist; in 
solitude the juices of my spirit are dried up, my 
thought stands still. I must go forth and enter into 
manifold association with others in order®® to be- 
hold what types of humanity there are, which of 
them are still alien to me, which I can assimilate, 
ever determining** my own being more decidedly 
by mutual give and take. My unquenched thirst 
for ever continuing self-development does not per- 
mit me to give the expression of my inner life an 
external finish. I simply launch my word and deed 
upon the world, nothing mindful whether observers 
have the sense to penetrate a crude exterior and 
happily to find the inner meaning, the unique spirit 
even in its less perfect manifestations. I have 


* “Leisure” in contrast to the artist’s diligence just described. 
Cf. Letters, v. 1, pp. 170ff., and 268. 


SOUNDINGS 37 


neither time nor inclination for this; I must be up 
and doing, moving on beyond my last position, 
bringing my own being to its completion, if*? that 
be possible in this short life, through new activity 
and thought. I hate even to try the same thing 
twice, so little is there of the artist in me. Hence, 
everything I do, I like to do in the company of 
others; even while engaged in meditation, in con- 
templation, or in the assimilation of anything new, 
I need the presence of some loved one, so that the 
inner event may immediately be communicated, and 
I may forthwith make my account with the world 
through the sweet and easy mediation of friendship. 
So was it, so is it now, and I am still so distant 
from my goal that I should be mistaken in thinking 
it will ever be otherwise.** Surely I am right, what- 
ever friends may say, in excluding myself from the 
territory sacred to artists. Gladly do I renounce 
everything with which they have credited me, pro- 
vided only that I find myself less imperfect than they 
imagine in the field where I have taken up my stand. 

Reveal thyself to me once more, oh fair vision of 
that wide realm of humanity, where dwell all those 
who seek only to realize themselves,** and to ex- 
press themselves in manifoid activities, without cre- 
ating any permanent monument of their labor! 
Reveal thyself once more, and let me see whether 
a place of my own belongs to me in thy realm. Let 
me behold whether there is coherence within me, 
or whether some intrinsic contrarieties prevent the 
image of myself from closing into unity, so that my 
own being like some miscarried sketch instead of 
attaining its perfection dissolves into emptiness and 


38 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


unreality. O no, I need not fear, no sad presenti- 
ment of failure possesses my soul! I recognize that 
all within me articulates to form a genuine whole, 
no foreign element in my nature oppresses me, no 
organ is missing, nor any member eligible for my 
unique life.* Whoever would make of himself a 
distinctive individual must be keen to perceive what 
he is not. For here, too, even in the realm of moral- 
ity at its highest, that intimate connection between 
action and the perception of truth obtains.¢ Only 
if man is conscious of his individuality in his pres- 
ent conduct can he be sure of not violating it in his 
next act,®® and only if he requires himself constantly 
to survey the whole of humanity, opposing his own 
expression of it to every other possible one, can he 
maintain the consciousness of his unique selfhood. 
For contrast is indispensable to set the individuality 
in relief. The highest** condition of individual per- 
fection in a limited field is a general sensitiveness.t 
And how can this subsist apart from love? With- 
out love, the very first attempt at self-formation 
would prove shattering because of the frightful dis- 


* “No sad presentiment, . . . I recognize . . . no organ is 
missing,” i. e., feeling, knowing, and acting testify to my being 
a complete whole. Cf. pp. 118, 141-142, for Schleiermacher’s 
treatment of this traditional three-fold division of the soul’s 
activity. 

+ That “intimate connection” which obtains also in the realm 
of elementary morality, the same for all. See above p. 28 
and note on the same page. 

~The ensuing passage (pp. 38-43) on “sensitiveness” and 
“love” as the cardinal conditions of moral perfection is central. 
“Sensitiveness” is receptive, the quality which at its deepest 
Schleiermacher describes in the “Speeches” (On Religion) as 
“sense and taste for the infinite,” the capacity for revelations. 
See pp. xlviiiff. Love is predominantly active and out-going, is 
the basis of true association, and must balance sensitiveness. 
See pp. xlviii-xlix, 87-88. 


SOUNDINGS 39 


proportion between giving and receiving; the mind 
would be forced to some extreme one-sidedness, and 
he who made the attempt in this fashion would 
either be wholly broken or else sink to the vulgar 
level. Love, thou force of gravitation in the spirit- 
ual world, no individual life and no development is 
possible without thee!* Without thee all things 
would flow together in a crude and homogeneous 
mass! Those who do not care to rise above this 
condition have little need of you; law and duty suf- 
fice for them, uniformity in conduct, and justice.f 
For such as these the sacred sense of love would be 
a useless treasure, and this is why they let the little 
of it that they have grow wild, uncultivated. Not 
recognizing its sacredness, they cast it carelessly 
into the common pool of human goods, that should 
be governed according to a universal law. But for 
us, O love, thou art the alpha and omega.t No de- 
velopment without love, and without individual 
development no perfection in love; each sup- 
plements the other, both increase indivisibly. I 
feel both of the highest conditions of morality united 
within me! I have made both sensitiveness and 
love my own, and both are ever waxing, a sure sign 
that my life is fresh and healthy, and that my indi- 
viduality will develop more. Is there anything that 
lies beyond the range of my sensitiveness? Those®’ 
who would have every one become a virtuoso and 
expert in some field of knowledge are wont to com- 
plain of me, that I will not suffer myself to be 


* Cf. the ensuing passage with the parallel one on love in the 
“Speeches,” On Religion, pp. 72-84. 

+ Another touch in the polemic against Kant and Fichte. 
Cf. pp. 30ff. 


¢“Us,” i. e, the “romanticists.” 


40 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


pinned down, that it is useless to hope I should ever 
seriously devote myself to some one thing. They 
say that when I have succeeded in gaining a certain 
view of things, my mind hastens on in its usual, 
restless, superficial fashion to other objects. Would 
that they leave me in peace, understanding that this 
is my destiny, that I must not devote myself to sci- 
ence,** because I am set upon the development of 
myself! Would that they allowed me to keep my 
mind open toward all their busy endeavors, con- 
sidering what I fashion within me as I contemplate 
their activities worth while their trouble! And yet 
their very complaints witness in my behalf. For 
there are others who are likewise dissatisfied with 
me, but for the opposite reason. These while unlike 
me in nature are nevertheless like me seeking to 
penetrate into the very center of humanity. They 
say my appreciation is fundamentally limited, that 
I can pass by indifferent to many sacred things, and 
spoil my deep innocent insight by vain contentious- 
ness.* Yes, I do still pass by much, but not with 
indifference. I dispute, but only to maintain my 
vision clear and open. Whenever I feel conscious 
of some expression of humanity that I have not 
mastered, my first concern is to dispute, not indeed 
whether it exists, but whether it is of such a nature, 
and only such, as is shown me by him in whom I 
first encounter it. My late awakened spirit, remem- 
bering how long it bore an alien yoke.+ fears ever 


* Schiele says: “Schleiermacher here defends himself against 
charges which Fr. Schlegel brought against him in his Lucinde 
in the person of Antonio. Lucinde, pp. 272ff. Dilthey, p. 459,” 
N. E. 503. (Schiele, p. 104.) 

+ Refers to his early education in the Moravian seminary. 
See Introduction, pp. xv-xviii. 


SOUNDINGS 41 


lest it be subjected again to the domination of some 
alien opinion, and whenever a strange object dis- 
closes a new aspect of life, my first step is to rise 
in arms against it, in order to fight for freedom and 
not to fall back at every new experience into the 
slavery in which my education began.*® As soon, 
however, as I have won my distinctive point of 
view, the time for strife is over, and I gladly suffer 
each other view to take its place beside my own; 
my mind in peace completes the work of penetrating 
and interpreting each other standpoint. 

Thus it is, that what may often seem a limitation 
of my sensitiveness is really but the first stir oft 
appreciation within me. To be sure, I have very often 
had to assert myself positively, during this beautiful 
time of my life,* when I came into contact with so 
much that was new to me, when so much became 
broad daylight to me which I had but darkly sensed 
before, and for which I had no _ preparation! 
Often I was obliged to appear antagonistic to those 
who were a source of new insight for me. Unper- 
turbed I have suffered their misapprehension, trust- 
ing that they would understand, as soon as they had 
entered more deeply into my nature. Even my 
friends have frequently misunderstood me in this 
way, especially when I passed by unsympatheti- 
cally, though not with enmity, things which ar- 
dently appealed to them and excited their zeal. The 
mind cannot apprehend all things at once: it is use- 
less for it to try to finish its task by a single effort; 
its process must be continuous in two directions, 


act ga So during his first residence in Berlin when he met 
Schlegel and his other associates. See Introduction, pp. xxxviiff. 
and, of course, Dilthey, pp. 182-296; N. E., 218-331. 


42 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


and each man has his own way of combining both 
in order to make up the whole.* For me it is im- 
possible, when anything new presents itself, to pen- 
etrate at once into its core with burning intensity 
and get to know it perfectly. Such an attempt would 
ill beseem that equanimity which is the keynote of 
my being’s harmony. To seize upon some such par- 
ticular would upset the balance of my life, and while 
I became absorbed in that one thing I should lose 
contact with the rest, without even making the first 
truly my own. I must first store up every new 
acquisition in my mind, and then let the usual forces 
of my life play upon it and about it, so that the new 
shall be mingled with the old, and come into touch 
with everything that I already harbor within me. 
Only by such activity as this do I succeed in pre- 
paring the way for a deeper and more intimate per- 
ception; contemplation and practice must often 
alternate before I am satisfied that I have fathomed 
anything. Thus and thus alone can I go about my 
business, if Iam not to violate my inner being, for in 
me self-development and activity turned beyond the 
self must balance at every moment. Therefore my 
progress is slow, and I shall have to live long before 
I have embraced all things equally, but whatever I 
do embrace will bear my impress.t Whatever part 
of humanity’s infinite realm I have apprehended will 


* The direction of predominantly receptive ‘“sensitiveness” 
and that of predominantly active “love.” Cf. Appendix, pp. 
146ff., for Schleiermacher’s treatment of these two in his later 
systematic works as the “symbolizing” and “organizing” func- 
tions of spirit respectively. Cf. also with other passages of 
the Soliloquies, especially pp. 19-20. 

+ “Impress,” as result of the “symbolizing” function of spirit. 
See pp. 17, 64. 


SOUNDINGS 43 


be in equal measure uniquely transformed and taken 
up into my being.*° 

Oh how much richer my life has become! What 
sweet awareness of inner*! worth, what enhanced 
assurance of individuality rewards me when [ 
survey the profit of so many happy and prosperous 
days! My silent effort, though it appear like mere 
idleness from without,* was not in vain; it has well 
served my inward task of self-development. Mis- 
taken outward activity ill-suited to my nature would 
not have carried this so far, and restricting the 
range of my appreciation would have impeded it 
still more.+ Alas that a man’s inner character 
should be so misjudged, even by those who might 
understand and who deserve to recognize it every- 
where! Alas that so many, even of these, confuse 
outward behavior and inner activity, deeming it pos- 
sible to construe the latter like the former from 
fragmentary appearances, and suspecting contra- 
diction where everything fits to perfection! Is then 
my real character so hard to recognize? Am I ever 
to forego my heart’s dearest desire to show myself 
as I am to all my worthy fellow men? For even 
now, as I look deeply into my nature, I am con- 
firmed anew in the conviction that this is the strong- 
est motive in my being. This is the truth, no mat- 
ter how often I am told that I am shut up in myself, 
and that I often coldly repel the hallowed advances 
of love and friendship. To be sure, I never deem 


* It touched the romanticists closely to distinguish between good 
and bad idleness. Cf. Schlegel’s Lucinde, and a sermon of 
Schieiermacher’s on the subject, Werke, II, v. 1, pp. 109ff. 

+I. E, neither art nor science was his proper vocation. Cf. 
above pp. 34-41. 


44 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


it necessary to talk of what I have done or what 
has happened to me. In my view, the worldly part 
of me is too insignificant that I should weary by 
dwelling on it, those whom I would gladly wish to 
have know me inwardly. Nor doI care to speak of 
that which is still dark. and unformed within me 
lacking that clarity which makes it mine. How 
should I offer to my friend what does not yet belong 
to me? Why thereby hide from him what I already 
am? How could I hope to communicate, without 
raising up misunderstanding, that which I do 
not yet understand myself? Such an attitude on 
my part does not argue reticence and lack of love. 
Rather is it the evidence of a holy reverence without 
which there is no real love; it is the instinct of deli- 
cacy that would not profane the highest, nor need- 
lessly obscure it. As soon as I have genuinely ap- 
propriated anything new in respect to culture and 
individuality, from whatever source, do I not run 
to my friend in word and deed to let him know of 
it, that he may share my joy, and himself profit as 
he perceives understandingly my inner growth? My 
friend I cherish as my own self; whatever. I come 
to recognize as my own, I place straightway at his 
disposal. It is true I sometimes take less interest 
than do those who call themselves his friends in 
what he does and in that which happens to him. 
His outward behavior neither affects nor concerns 
me, if I already understand the inner being whence 
it flows, and know that it must of necessity be thus, 
because my friend is such as he is. This outward 
side of him neither feeds nor excites my love for 
him, has no relation to it.*? It belongs to the world 


SOUNDINGS 45 


and with all its consequences must conform to the 
laws of necessity.* But whatever the consequences, 
whatever happens to my friend, he will surely know 
how to act with a freedom worthy of him- 
self. And nothing else concerns me. I contemplate 
his fate with calmness even as I do my own. Who 
will regard this as cold indifference? A clear appreci- 
ation of the contrast between world and man is the 
ground on which all self-respect and sense of free- 
dom rest. Should I grant this less unto my friend 
than unto myself? 

This is the very thing of which I chiefly boast, 
that my love and friendship always have so high a 
source,** that they have never been blended with 
any vulgar sentiment, have never been the offspring 
of habit or tender feeling, but ever an act of purest 
freedom, orientated towards the individuality of 
other human beings. I have ever kept the more 
common sentiment at a distance from myself. A 
benefit has never bribed me into friendship, nor has 
beauty stolen my love. Pity has never so enmeshed 
my judgment that it ascribed a merit to misfortune 
and represented suffering human beings as other- 
wise and better than they are.** And soa place was 
cleared in my soul for genuine love and friendship, 
and my longing to fill this space with ever larger 
and more manifold content never abates. Wherever 
I notice an aptitude for individuality, inasmuch as 
love and sensitiveness, its highest guarantees, are 
present, there I also find an object for my love. I 
would have my love embrace every unique self, 
from the unsophisticated youth, in whom freedom 


*Cf. pp. 18ff. 


46 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


is but beginning to germinate, to the ripest and 
most finished type of man. Whenever I see such a 
one, I give him the salutation of the love within me, 
even if our brief meeting and parting permit no 
more than this gesture of spiritual greeting. Neither 
do I measure my friendship for anyone by any 
worldly standard of external appearances. My 
vision soars beyond the worldly and temporal, seek- 
ing inner greatness. Whether he to whom I would 
be a friend is already sensitive to much or little, 
whether he is or is not far advanced in his develop- 
ment, whether he has many achievements to his 
credit or not, all these things may not determine my 
attitude toward him, and whatever is missing in this 
respect I can easily dispense with. His unique be- 
ing and its relation to humanity is the object of my 
quest. I love him in the measure that I find and 
understand this individuality, but I can give him 
proof thereof only in proportion to his understand- 
ing of my own true self. Alas, often did this love 
of mine return to me uncomprehended, the language 
of the heart was not heard, as if I had remained 
dumb, and those to whom I would have shown my 
love actually believed I had. 

Men often travel in neighboring ways, and yet 
are not near each other. The one divines a friendly 
presence and is inclined toward friendly greeting. 
He calls but calls in vain; the other does not hear 
him. Frequently opposites approach each other,* 
and henceforth there is to be no more separation. 
But their encounter is for a moment only, and 
movements in opposite directions sweep them from 
each other’s ken, neither knowing whither the other 


SOUNDINGS 47 


has disappeared. This has often befallen me in my 
longing for love. Would it not be shameful, if I 
had not at last been disciplined, if my all too easy 
optimism had not fled, and experienced wisdom 
taken its place? “Here is one who will understand 
you in part, there another who will understand a 
different side of you; a certain kind of love is pos- 
sible toward the one, but beware how you offer it 
to the other.” Thus am I often vainly warned to 
be discreet. For the urge of my heart leaves little 
room for prudence;* much less can I presume to 
assign limits to other men, and to say how far they 
should respond to me and to my love. I always take 
too much for granted, I always try again, and am 
forthwith punished for my avarice by losing what 
I had already gained. But no other fortune is possi- 
ble for one who is engaged in forming himself, and 
that I suffer thus is the surest proof that I am so en- 
gaged. A person so occupied, uniquely combines in 
himself various elements of humanity.** He belongs 
to more than one world. How could he move in 
an orbit exactly parallel to that of another, who is 
also a distinctive individual, how continue in his 
neighborhood?+ Like a comet the cultured indi- 
vidual traverses many systems and encircles many 
a sun.t Now he passes a certain star which sees 
him gladly, and seeks to know him; he on his part 
bends his course with friendly intent in that star’s 


* As to Schleiermacher’s prudence, cf. pp. xxxiv, 89, 100-103. 

7+ Explanation of apparent waywardness and fleeting attach- 
ments that the non-romanticist fails to understand. The mean- 
ing 1s clearer in B and C; see pp. 108. 

£ He belongs to “more than one world,” . . . “traverses 
many systems,” “many a sun.” Cf. Schleiermacher’s develop- 
ment of this theme in the fourth Soliloquy, pp. 76, 81-88 below. 


48 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


direction. Then lo! he has moved away into far-off 
spaces, his very shape seems changed; there is a 
doubt whether he is still the same. But anon he 
returns in swift revolution and there takes place 
anew a passing interchange of love and friendship. 
But where find the fair ideal of complete and per- 
manent union, of friendship perfect on both sides? 
Only where on both sides love and sensitiveness 
have increased in equal measure as it were beyond 
all measure. But then, in such a perfect love the 
individuals themselves are also made perfect.* The 
hour is at hand—ah! for all of us it strikes much © 
sooner—to yield up finite existence, and to return 
out of the world to the bosom of the infinite. 


* Cf. the fuller exposition of this idea at the end of the 
fourth Soliloquy, p. 87-88. Schleiermacher thought of the first 
Soliloquy as symmetrical with the third, the second with the 
fourth, both in respect to content and style. See Schiele, p. 
XXXiv. 


OR 
THE WORLD 


REAR old age, they say, has the right to com- 

plain about the world; it may be pardoned for 
preferring to look back on better days when life was 
at the full. Joyous youth should smile upon life, 
ignoring defects, making the most of what is there, 
and trusting readily to the sweet deceits of hope. 
But the truth, a correct estimate of the world, is 
credited to him alone, who secure in the content- 
ment of middle age, neither vainly grieves nor 
falsely hopes. Such contentment, however, is but 
folly’s passage from hope in life to contempt for it; 
such wisdom but the hollow echo of footsteps re- 
luctantly moving on from youth to age; such satis- 
faction is a stupid turn of make-believe courtesy on 
the part of one who would escape outright impeach- 
ment of a world, in which his stay is bound to be soon 
cut short, and who would no less avoid impeaching 
his own judgment; such praise of middle-life is 
vanity ashamed of its mistakes, it is a forgetting of 
recent desires, it is the complacency which contents 
itself with poverty rather than submit to toil. I did 
not flatter myself when I was young, and therefore, 
I do not flatter the world now, nor at any time. It 
cannot disappoint one who expects nothing, nor 
will he offend it in revenge. I have done little to 
make things what they are, and so I need not expect 


50 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


to find them better. Nothing disgusts me more 
than the vile praise which is lavished on the world 
from all sides, by those who wish to shine in the 
reflected light of their own handiwork. This per- 
verse generation loves to talk of how it has im- 
proved the world, in order to plume itself and to be 
considered superior to its ancestors. Were per- 
fected human nature already in blossom and diffus- 
ing its first sweet fragrance, were the seeds of 
self-culture for ever so many individuals already 
assured of their growth on the soil of a common 
civilization, if the breath of every life were already 
free and sacred, and if a pervasive love drew all 
humanity into miraculous relationships ever pro- 
ductive of new and marvelous fruit,—even then this 
generation could not outdo its glittering praise of 
mankind’s present estate. To hear them discourse 
on the world of today, one would imagine the thun- 
dering voice of their mighty reason’ had burst the 
chains of ignorance, that they had at last succeeded 
in setting up a perfect portrait of human nature, 
which formerly had been painted obscurely in colors 
of darkness so as to be scarcely recognizable,* but 
which now was marvelously illumined by light 
from above,”? so that no sane vision could longer 
mistake the general outlines or even the individual 
traits; they sneak as if the music of their wisdom 
had transformed raw, predatory self-seeking into 
the tamest house-pet and taught it the arts. Every 
least moment is supposed to have been full of prog- 
ress. O how deeply I despise this generation, which 


* The phrase “colors of darkness” no doubt characterizes the 
doctrine of human depravity which the Enlightenment attacked. 


THE WORLD 51 


plumes itself more shamelessly than any previous 
one ever did, which can scarcely endure the belief 
in a still better future and reviles everyone who 
dedicates himself thereto, simply because the true 
goal of mankind, toward which the age has risked 
scarcely a single step, lies unknown to it in the dim 
distance! 

Of course, if one is content to have man control 
the material world alone, tapping all its powers for 
his own service,® and conquering space so that it 
no longer cripples the strength of his spirit,* the 
mere nod of his will instantly and everywhere pro- 
ducing the action it intends, with all things under 
the dominion of ideas and the spirit’s presence 
everywhere revealed; whoever is content to see 
crude matter vitalized and to have mankind find the 
joy of living in the consciousness of mastering its 
body,°*—let him, for whom this is the ultimate aim, 
join in the noisy praise of our times. For now as 
never before may man justly boast such mastery. 
However much remains undone, enough has been 
accomplished to make him feel lord of the earth, 
believing that nothing may be left unattempted in 
this, his own particular domain, and that the con- 
cept® of impossibility, ever narrowing, must finally 
vanish altogether. In respect to this purpose I feel 
that communion with mankind augments my own 
powers in every moment of my life. Each of us 
ples his own particular trade, completing the work 
of someone whom he never knew, or preparing the 
way for another who in turn will scarcely recognize 


*“Tts body” here means the whole material world. Cf. above 
pp. 16-17. 


wy SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


how much he owes to him. Thus the work’ of 
humanity is promoted throughout the world; 
everyone feels the influence of others as part of his 
own life; by the ingenious mechanism of this com- 
munity the slightest movement of each individual 
is conducted like an electric spark, through a long 
chain of a thousand living links, greatly amplify- 
ing its final effect; all are, as it were, members of 
a great organism, and whatever they may have done 
severally, is instantaneously consummated as its 
work. Probably this sense of life’s enhancement by 
common effort is more vividly and more satisfyingly 
present in me than in those who are so loud in its 
praise. For I am not disturbed and disappointed 
by their gloomy supposition that the gains, which 
all helped to produce and to maintain are enjoyed 
so unequally. Lazy thinking and emptiness of 
mind can be but a loss to anyone, habit levies it. 
tax on us all, and whenever I compare a person’s 
restrictions with his powers, I arrive at the same 
ratio, expressing in different ways an equal measure 
of life for all.* But even so I regard this whole 
sense of a common material progress to be of little 
value; it is not further gain in this direction that I 
desire for the world; it causes me mortal agony that 
this, an unholy waste of its holy powers, should be 
regarded as mankind’s entire task. My demands 
are not so modest as to be content with the improve- 
ment of man’s relation to external nature, even 
though this relation were already brought to the 


* The thought here seems somewhat forced. The field to 
which a person’s activity is restricted varies with the extent of 
his powers. Life demands much from him to whom it gives 
much, and the ratio between give and take is the same for all. 


THE WORLD 53 


highest point of perfection!® Is man then merely 
a creature of the senses, for whom a heightened 
feeling of vitality, of health and strength can be the 
highest good? Is the spirit satisfied to inhabit the 
body, extending and augmenting its powers in con- 
scious mastery thereof? For this is the multitude’s 
whole ambition, and upon such achievements they 
base their unmeasured pride. From caring for their 
own physical existence and well-being they have 
come to care for the similar well-being of all, but 
that is as far as they have risen in their conscious- 
ness of humanity. That is what virtue, justice, and 
love mean to them; that is the essence of their noisy 
triumph over base self-seeking; that is the end of 
all their wisdom, and such are the only links they 
are able to break in the chain of ignorance; every- 
body is to co-operate and every association is to be 
formed for an aim no higher than this. O what a 
perversion to think a man should devote his spir- 
itual powers to secure for others what he himself 
spurns as inferior! How disfigured the mind which 
deeins it a virtue to sacrifice the highest in such 
low idolatry! 

Accept thy harsh lot, O my soul, to have seen the 
light only in such dark and wretched days. You 
can hope for naught from such a world to further 
your aspirations, it offers nothing for your inner 
development! You will necessarily find association 
with it a limitation, rather than an enhancement of 
your powers. All who know the higher ambitions 
experience this. Many a human heart thirsts for 
love; many a man is haunted by the image of an 
ideal companion® with whom close interchange of 


54 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


thought and feeling would prove mutually profitable 
and elevating,’® but unless perchance he discovers 
such a friend within his own narrow circle, both 
he and that other consume their brief lives in a 
mutual longing.41 The earth’s resources and their 
location are described by thousands; I can learn in 
a moment where any material thing I need is to 
be found, and in the next I can possess it.1? But 
no means exists for discovering such a personality, 
as is indispensable to the nurture of my inner life.*® 
Society is not organized for such a purpose; to 
bring together those who need each other is no one’s 
business. And even if he, whose heart seeks love 
everywhere in vain, should learn where dwelt his 
friend and his beloved, yet would he be restricted 
by his station in life, by the rank which he holds 
in that meagre thing we call society. Man clings 
to these restricting ties more tenaciously than stone 
or plant to mother earth. The piteous fate of the 
negro, torn from his loved ones and his native land, 
for base servitude in a strange and distant country, 
is daily meted out in the routine of the world to 
better men also, who, prevented from reaching the 
distant** homeland where dwell their unfound 
friends, must waste away their inner lives ineffec- 
tually in surroundings that ever remain alien and 
barren to them. Many a man has sufficient pene- 
tration to apprehend the inner meaning of human 
nature, he is prepared to discriminate its various 
forms and to find what is common to them,” but it 
chances that he lives in a barren wilderness or amid 
unfruitful luxuriance, where the everlasting monot- 


THE WORLD 55 


ony gives no nourishment to his spirit’s needs.* 
Thus driven inward upon itself his imagination 
sickens, his spirit is forced to consume itself in 
dreamy fictions, for the world offers him no suste- 
nance. It is no one’s business to supply him with 
the sustenance he needs, or to take an interest in 
placing him in a more favorable atmosphere.** 
Again, many a man has a genuine impulse to cre- 
ate works of art, but opportunity to sift his mate- 
rials, to discard carefully and successfully all that 
is out of keeping is denied him. Or, if his project 
does achieve unity and fair proportions, he may 
lack opportunity to give its details the last touch 
of perfection. Does anyone furnish what he lacks, 
or freely offer him counsel, or take active part in 
perfecting his unfinished work? On the contrary, 
each man must stand alone and attempt the impos- 
sible! Neither in art nor in the realization of human 
perfectiont is there community of talent, such as 
was instituted long ago for the service of man’s 
external needs! The artist becomes aware of other 
men’s existence only when pained by criticisms irrele- 
vant to his genius, or when their deficient under- 
standing thwarts the effect of his own esthetic in- 
tent.’ Thus in his highest concerns man seeks help 
in vain from association with his fellow-beings, and 
even to expect such aid is exasperating and foolish 
in the estimations of the elect of our age. To pre- 
sage a higher, more intimate, spiritual community, 
to wish to promote it despite limited outlooks and 
petty prejudices seems to them vain romanticism. 


* Cf. Schopenhauer’s essay on The Wisdom of Life, II. 
+ See note on p. 19 with reference to this recurring dichot- 
omy. 


56 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


If one feels oppressed by life’s limitations, they at- 
tribute it to misplaced idealism and not to life’s 
poverty; culpable inertia, they claim, and not a lack 
of social encouragement is what makes a man dis- 
satisfied with the world and disposes him to let his 
empty wishes roam over vast tracts of the impos- 
sible. Impossible! yes, for him whose vision is on 
the low plane of the present with its small horizon. 
What grievous doubts would assail me of man’s 
ability to draw nearer his goal, if by weakness of 
imagination I were riveted to the actual and its im- 
mediate consequences.* 

All who belong to a better world must for the 
present pine in dismal servitude! Whatever spirit- 
ual association now exists is debased in service of 
the earthly; aimed at some utility it confines the 
spirit and does violence to the inner life. When 
friends extend to each other the hand of fellow- 
ship, the bond should issue in something greater 
than each could achieve independently; each ought 
to grant the other full play to follow the promptings 
of his spirit, offering assistance only where the other 
feels a lack, and not insinuating his own ideas in 
place of his friend’s. In this wise each would find 
life and strength in the other, and the potentialities 
within him would be fully realized. But what, on 
the other hand, comes to pass in the world? There 
is always some one ready to perform material serv- 
ice for another, even ready to sacrifice his own well- 
being, while to exchange knowledge,’® to show sym- 
pathy, to mitigate sufferings, is what ranks as the 


* See the development of this idea below on pp. 81-84. 


THE WORLD BY, 


highest. But there is ever an element of antipathy 
to the inner nature of man in ordinary friendships; 
people would like to have certain faults cancelled 
out of a friend’s character, and what would be a 
fault in themselves they regard as such in him, too. 
Thus each makes sacrifice of his individuality to 
suit the other, until they become alike, but neither 
like his own true self, unless one of them has will 
enough to check this ruination, or unless, after long 
suspense between strife and concord, the friendship 
weakens and dissolves.?® Woe to the man of yield- 
ing disposition, if a friend becomes attached to him! 
He, poor fellow, dreams of a new and stronger life, 
he rejoices in the happy hours which pass sweetly 
in this comradeship, and little does he see how his 
spirit becomes involved in this false felicity, and 
dissipates itself until at last his inner life, injured 
and crushed at every point, is obliterated. Many 
of the better sort have come to this pass, the fun- 
damental traits of their own natures are scarcely 
recognizable any longer, mutilated as they are at 
the hand of friends and plastered all over with un- 
natural affectations.—Man and wife are united in 
tender affection, and go to build themselves a home. 
Even as new individuals issue from the lap of their 
love, so too a new and common will should develop 
from the harmony of their natures. Their peace- 
ful home with its occupations, its arrangements and 
private joys, should reveal this will in action. Alas! 
that this finest of human relationships should be so 
universally desecrated! Its true significance remains 
a closed secret to those that enter into it; each keeps 
and cultivates his own will after marriage as before, 


58 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


they take turns in governing, and in silent disap- 
pointment each reckons up whether the gain really 
outweighs what he has sacrificed in sheer freedom. 
At last each becomes the other’s fate, and confront- 
ing cold necessity, the ardor of their love dies out. 
In the last analysis, when measured by the same 
standard, all men’s accounts come equally to 
nought.* Every home should be the beautiful em- 
bodiment,”° the fine creation of a unique soul; it 
should have its own stamp and unique characteris- 
tics, but with a dumb monotony they are all** a 
desolate grave of freedom and true life. Does she 
make him happy? Does she live for him alone? 
Does he make her happy? Is he all complaisance? 
Do both count mutual sacrifice their highest joy? 
© torture me not, image of misery which I see deep 
hid behind their bliss, a sign of nearby death, the 
wonted deceiver who paints before them this last 
counterfeit of life!—-What has become of the fables 
of ancient sages about the state?} Where is the 
power with which this highest level of existence 
should endow mankind, where the consciousness 
each should have of partaking in the state’s reason, 
its imagination, and its strength? Where is devo- 
tion to this new existence?? that man has conceived, 
a will to sacrifice the old individual soul rather than 
lose the state, a readiness to set one’s life at stake 
rather than see the fatherland perish? Where is 
foresight keeping close watch lest the country be 
seduced and its spirit corrupted? Where find the 
individual character each state should have, and the 


* Cf. above pp. 51-52 and note. 
+ The reference is probably to Plato’s Republic. 


THE WORLD 59 


acts that reveal it? The present generation is so 
far from even suspecting what this side of humanity 
signifies, that it dreams of reorganizing the state?® 
as it does of human ideals in general; each, whether 
he lives in one of the old or new states, would pour 
all into his own mold, like some sage who lays 
down a model for the future in his works, and hopes 
that one day all mankind will venerate it as the 
symbol of its salvation. They all believe that the 
best of states is one that gives least evidence of its 
existence, and that permits the need for which it 
exists to be least in evidence also.* Whoever thus 
regards the greatest achievement of human art, by 
which man should be raised to the highest level of 
which he is capable, as nothing but a necessary 
evil, as an indispensable mechanism for covering up 
crime and mitigating its effects, must inevitably 
sense nothing but a limitation in that which is de- 
signed to enhance his life in the highest degree. 

O what is the vile source of these great evils but 
the fact that man has no sense for anything but vis- 
ible, external association, and that he wants to mold 
and measure everything in terms of this? In so far 
as association is external, it must always involve 
limitation. The man who would amass material 
possessions must grant others opportunity for doing 
likewise; the sphere occupied by each sets a limit 
to the rest, and they respect it only because they 
are not able to possess the world individually, 
but can make use of each other’s persons and goods. 


* Among other laisser-faire theorists Schleiermacher may 
have had Wm. von Humboldt in mind in this passage, who 
had stated his belief in the limitation of the state’s functions in 
1792. (See Schiele; p. 106.) 


60 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


All else is concentrated upon this one end: increase 
in outward possessions or in knowledge, aid and 
protection against fate or misfortune, stronger alli- 
ances to keep rivals in check. This is all that men 
nowadays seek and find in friendship, marriage, and 
fatherland; they do not seek what they need to sup- 
plement their own efforts toward self-development, 
nor enrichment of the inner life. In respect to such 
ends every association that one enters into, from 
the very earliest educational ties onward, is a 
hindrance; at the very outset the youthful spirit, 
instead of enjoying free play and opportunity to 
see world and man as a whole, is restricted by alien 
ideas and early accustomed to a life of prolonged 
spiritual slavery.* In the midst of wealth what 
lamentable poverty! How unavailing is the strug- 
gle of a superior mind, seeking moral cultivation 
and development, with this world that recognizes 
only legality, that offers dead formulas in place of 
life, custom and routine in place of free activity, a 
world that boasts of great wisdom when, happily, 
some outworn form is discarded and gives place to 
something new that seems vital at the moment, but 
which will all too soon become a mere formula and 
lifeless convention in its turn. How should I find 
salvation in such a world were it not for you, divine 


* The problem of freedom and individuality was a major con- 
sideration in Schleiermacher’s educational theory. Cf. pp. 
78-79, of the text, and also his lectures on pedagogy (Werke, 
Lev 9). 

His notes contain a “Catechism of reason for women of 
quality,” the fifth commandment of which reads: “Honor the 
individuality and wilfullness of your children, that it may go 


well with them and their lives upon earth may be strong.” (See 
Schiele, p. 106, and Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 83-84.) 


THE WORLD 61 


imagination! Did not you give me the certain 
premonition of better times to come! 

Yes, culture will develop out of barbarism, and 
life will spring even from the sleep of death! The 
elements of a better life are already present. Their 
superior potency will not remain forever in dormant 
hiding; sooner or later the spirit dwelling in man 
will arouse them into activity. As the cultivation 
of the earth for man’s benefit is now far superior 
to that crude dominion over nature, wherein men 
fled timidly before every manifestation of her 
powers, so the blessed time when a true and spir- 
itual society shall arise cannot be remote from 
this present childhood of humanity. The rude 
slave of nature would have believed nothing of a 
future dominion over her, nor would he have under- 
stood what had inspired the soul of one who prophe- 
sied thereof, for he lacked even the conception of 
this condition for which he felt no desire. Just so 
the man of today, if anyone holds up to him un- 
familiar ideals or speaks of a different society and 
different relationships, cannot conceive of anything 
better or higher for which one could wish, nor is 
he at all fearful of anything ever coming to pass 
that would deeply put to shame his pride and in- 
dolent complacency. Yet if our present, much 
vaunted enlightenment developed out of a wretched 
barbarism, in which the germs of progress are 
scarcely discernible even now to a vision trained 
by the subsequent course of events, why should not 
our chaotic philistinism, amid which the eye already 
discerns through sinking mists the rudiments of a 
better world, give place at last to the sublime rule 


62 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


of moral and spiritual cultivation. It is coming! 
Why should I with faint heart count the hours 
which must still transpire or the generations that 
must pass away ere then? Why let the time of its 
coming trouble me, since time does not comprehend 
my inner life? 

A man belongs to the world he helped to create; 
his will and his thought are all absorbed in it, and 
it is outside its bounds that he is a stranger. Who- 
ever lives at peace with the present and desires 
nothing further is a contemporary of those semi- 
barbarous peovle who laid the foundations of our 
world; his life is a sequel to theirs, he is satisfied to 
enjoy the fulfillment of their wishes, and a better 
condition which they could not conceive, he does 
not conceive either. I, for my part, am a stranger 
to the life and thought of this present generation, 
I am a prophet-citizen of a later world, drawn 
thither by a vital imagination and strong faith; to 
it belong my every word and deed. What the pres- 
ent world is doing and undergoing leaves me un- 
moved; far below me it appears insignificant, and 
I can at a glance survey the confused course of its 
great revolutions.* Through every revolution 
whether in the field of science or of action it re- 
turns ever to the same point, and presenting ever 
the same features clearly reveals its limitations and 
the narrow scope of its endeavors. Its own works 
are impotent to advance it; they but keep it going 
in the same old cycle, and hence I can take no de- 
light in them; I am not deceived into placing false 


* No doubt Schleiermacher has in mind particularly the 
French Revolution and the Kantian revolution in philosophy. 
See Introduction, pp. xxi-xxxiii. Cf. also pp. 74-75, of the text. 


THE WORLD 63 


hope in everything that appears to contain some 
promise. But wherever I do see a spark of the hid- 
den fire that must sooner or later consume the out- 
worn and recreate the world, I am drawn toward it 
with love and true hope as to a welcome sign of my 
distant home. And close at hand the sacred flame 
has appeared shedding its unearthly light,** a sign, 
to the knowing, that the spirit is there. All who 
like myself belong to the future are drawing toward 
each other in love and hope,” and each in his every 
word and act cements and extends a spiritual bonu 
by which we are pledged to better times. 

But this too the world makes as difficult as pos- 
sible; it prevents kindred minds from recognizing 
each other, and contrives thus to destroy the seed 
of future improvement. An act, born of the most 
immaculate conception, is nevertheless subject to a 
thousand misinterpretations;.it is inevitable that 
what has been done in the purest moral spirit should 
often be associated with worldly motives.?® Too 
many mask themselves in false appearances to allow 
of confidence in everyone who shows signs of supe- 
rior spirit. It is right to be sceptical of first appear- 
ances when looking for brothers in spirit; yet be- 
cause the world and the times make ready confi- 
dence impossible, it often happens that two con- 
genial spirits pass each other by unrecognized. 
Knowing this, take courage and have hope! You 
are not the only one whose roots strike into that 
deeper soil which at some distant time will be the 
surface; the seed of the future is germinating every- 
where! Continue to look for it wherever possible. 
You will still find many a friend and will learn to 


64 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


recognize as such many whom you have long mis- 
judged. And you yourself will be recognized by 
many; despite the world, mistrust and suspicion 
will at last disappear, if by the constancy of your 
action you give a steady token to the pure in heart. 
You need but impress the spirit’s stamp incisively 
upon every action, that those who are near may 
discover you. Only pronounce clearly the senti- 
ment of your heart, that those who are distant may 
hear! 

To be sure, the world, again, has the magic of 
language at its command, and we have not.?" Lan- 
guage has exact symbols in fine abundance for 
everything thought and felt in the world’s sense; it 
is the clearest mirror of the times, a work of art 
revealing the current spirit. But for our purposes 
language is still crude and undeveloped, a poor in- 
strument of communion.* O how long at the out- 
set it hinders the spirit from arriving at an imme- 
diate vision of itself! Before it has yet found itself 
the spirit is enmeshed in the world through lan- 
guage, and its first difficulty is to gradually extri- 
cate itself from this entanglement. And if in spite 
of all the errors and corruptions introduced by 
words, the spirit has at last penetrated through to 
truth, how treacherously language then changes her 
tactics, now isolating and imprisoning its victim, so 
that he cannot communicate his discovery, nor 
receive further sustenance from the outside. Long 
must he search amid the profusion of language be- 


* The ensuing passage on language brings out some literary 
conceptions of the romantic movement. Cf. especially the pass- 
age on the music of language, p. 66. See Dilthey, pp. 260- 
296; N. E. 296-331. 


THE WORLD 65 


fore a term can be found, above all suspicion, to 
which his inmost thought can be entrusted; once 
found the unspiritual immediately catch up the 
phrase, give it some strange twist, so that a person 
hearing it thereafter must needs doubt as to its 
original connections. Many a word comes in an- 
swer from a distance to such an isolated soul, but he 
must question whether it really means what it 
means to him, whether it was sent by friend or foe. 
Is then language indeed the common possession of 
the children of the spirit and the children of the 
world! How absurd that the latter should pretend 
to an interest in true wisdom! No, they shall not 
succeed either in confusing or intimidating us! We 
are here waging a great battle around the sacred 
standard of humanity, which we, men of the future, 
must maintain for the coming generations. It is 
a decisive battle, but also a certain victory, to be 
won, independent of chance or fortune, by spiritual 
strength and genuine art. 


Manners should be the outer garment worn by 
inner individuality,* delicately and_ significantly 
adapted to its form, revealing its fine proportions 
and gracefully following its movement. Always 
treat this consummate investiture with piety, giving 
it ever a lighter and finer texture, drawing it ever 
more closely about the self. Then must hypocrisy 
at length come to end, for a profane and vulgar 
nature appearing in the guise of nobility will soon 

* The German word “Sitte,” which I have here translated by 
“manners” has, of course, the wider meaning of one’s entire 
“bearing,” “behavior,” “deportment,” etc., and hence I have at 


times used these terms in the sequel where the same German 
word recurs. 


66 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


be exposed. The informed observer will at every 
movement detect concealed defects,?* the magic rai- 
ment will fall loosely where there is emptiness, and 
betray inward unshapeliness by its flutter at every 
rapid step. Thus the constancy and evenness of 
one’s bearing ought to become and will become an 
infallible criterion of the spiritual nature within, 
and a token by which superior minds privately rec- 
ognize each other. Language too should objectify 
the most interior thoughts, the highest intuitions, 
the most hidden observations of the spirit upon its 
own conduct, and the marvelous music of words 
should indicate the value, the degree of love, at- 
tached to each object. For though others can abuse 
the symbols which we consecrate to the highest, 
and can insinuate their petty and limited meanings 
where the reference is to the holy, yet is the tone of 
the worldling different from that of the consecrated. 
The same intellectual symbols dispose themselves 
differently and suggest a different melody to the 
wise than to the slaves of the age; the latter ele- 
vate something else to a first principle, and arrive 
at consequences that to the former are remote and 
strange. Each of us need only make his language 
thoroughly his own and artistically all of a piece, 
so that its derivation and modulation, its logic and 
its sequences, exactly represent the structure of his 
spirit, and the music of his speech has the accent of 
his heart and the keynote of his thought. If we do 
this, there will appear within the vulgar tongue 
another language, secret and holy, which the uncon- 
secrated can neither interpret nor imitate, because 
the key to its characters lies in its spiritual mean- 


THE WORLD 67 


ing; a few phrases of his thought, a few notes of his 
discourse will betray the outsider.* 

O if only the wise and the good might thus rec- 
ognize each other by their manner and their lan- 
guage, if the present confusion were only dissolved 
and the issue clearly drawn, if the inner feud would 
only come to an open breach! Then victory too 
would draw nigh, a fairer sun would rise, for the 
younger generation with its open mind and unpre- 
judiced spirit would surely incline to the better 
side. Significant actions can but announce the spir- 
it’s presence, and miracles must bear witness to 
an imprint of divine origin.} It would then be evi- 
dent that the absence of beauty and unity in one’s 
bearing, or the assuming of manners as a frigid 
semblance to disguise deformity, betokens deficient 
awareness of inner reality. It would be evident 
that he knows nothing about self-cultivation and 
has never beheld in himself the essential man, for 
whom the foundation-stones of language, quarried 
out of the inner life, have weathered and broken 
into small fragments; whose eloquence, designed 
to touch the depths, evaporates into meaningless 
phrases and superficial polish, while its lofty music 
degenerates into idle tonal artifices that are impo- 
tent to represent the real character of the spirit. No 
one can live simply and in the way of beauty save 
he who hates lifeless formulas, seeks after genuine 
self-cultivation, and so belongs to a world that is 
yet to be. No one can become a true artist in the 
use of language save he who sees himself with 


* Cf. Introduction, pp. xvii, xxxviii, for comment on this 
tendency toward the esoteric in romanticism. Cf. also pp. 11-12. 
+ As to “miracles” cf. On Religion, pp. 88-89. 


68 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


unclouded insight and has made the inner nature of 
man his own. 

It is the quiet omnipotence of these sentiments, 
and not the criminal violence of vain experimenta- 
tion, that must at last produce reverence for the 
highest and the dawn ofa better age. May it be 
the aim of my life to promote such reverence, and 
may I thereby discharge my obligations to the 
world and fulfill my calling. Thus will the power 
I exercize combine with the efforts of all the elect, 
and what issues from my nature as a free activity 
will help mankind on the way to its true goal. 


IV 


[ene Obey nal Sa OB 


S1T TRUE that we all walk the earth under the 

dispensation of powers not our own, and live 
uncertain of the future? Is it true that a heavy veil 
conceals every man’s destiny, and that fate as a 
blind force, or even as the alien, arbitrary will of 
a higher Providence—for my purpose I see no dis- 
tinction—plays with our decisions as with our de- 
sires? Certainly, if our decisions are no more than 
wishes, then man is the toy of chance! If he has 
learned to find himself nowhere but in the flux of 
those transient impressions and particular ideas that 
happen to be the realities of his life; if his whole life 
is preoccupied with the insecure possession of exter- 
nal things, and he never penetrates more deeply into 
his own being, because he is absorbed in dizzy con- 
templation of the everlasting swirl in which both he 
and his possessions are carried round; if under the 
influence of one random emotion or another his at- 
tention is always directed upon some particular ex- 
ternal thing, which he wants to pursue or possess 
according to the impulse of the moment; then to be 
sure fate may prove hostile, robbing him of what he 
desires and playing with his resolutions, which de- 
serve to be regarded as toys; then let him complain 
of uncertainty, since from his point of view noth- 
ing is certain; then indeed his own blindness must 


70 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


seem like a heavy veil, and it must surely be dark 
where the light of freedom does not shine; then, of 
course, he must want to know above allt whether 
the changes that govern him are dependent on a 
supreme will above all wills, or whether they are a 
mechanical result of the combination of many 
forces. For this latter possibility must terrify one 
who has never laid hold of his true self. If every 
ray of light upon the infinite chaos of things shows 
man more clearly that he is not a free being, but 
only a cog in the great wheel which moves both him 
and all else in its eternal revolution, then hope, re- 
newed again and again in defiance of all experience 
and all knowledge, hope in a sublime mercy must 
be his only support. 

Welcome art thou, oh cherished assurance of 
freedom! Every time I see the slaves of necessity 
trembling I welcome thee anew! Oh the beauty 
and peace of that clear understanding with which 
I confidently greet the future, knowing what it is 
and what it has in store; I am its master, it is not 
mine. It hides nothing from me; it approaches 
without any pretense of power over me. Only the 
gods,? who have no further scope for self-improve- 
ment, are ruled by fate, and the worst of mortals, 
who have no desire to perfect themselves, but not 
the man who is occupied, as he should be, in devel- 
oping himself. Where find the limit set to my 
power? At what point does the dread realm of 
alien necessity begin? The only impossibility of 
which I am aware is to transcend the limits which 
I freely placed upon my nature from the begin- 


PROSPECT Kh 


ning ;* the only things I cannot do are those which 
I surrendered in deciding what I wanted to become; 
naught else is impossible for me save to reverse that 
original decision as once taken.* Whoever regards 
such limitation which is the essential condition of 
his very existence, of his freedom, of his having a 
will at all, as an alien coercion seems to me strangely 
confused. But do I sense any further restrictions 
upon me within the limits of my chosen sphere? 
Without doubt this would be the case, if even in 
matters of morality and self-culture I harbored the 
desire for some specific result at each moment; if 
the performance of some particular action should at 
any time become in itself the object of my will, then, 
to be sure, this object might escape me just when 
I wanted it. In such a case I should indeed find 
myself under alien control, but were I to blame fate, 
I should only be mistaking the real thing at fault, 
namely myself. But such a fate can never befall 
me! For I live always in the light of my entire be- 
ing. My only purpose is ever to become more fully 
what I am; each of my acts is but a special phase 
in the unfolding of this single will; and no less cer- 
tain than my power to act at all is my ability to 
act always in this spirit; in the sequence of my 
actions there will be nothing unconformable to this 
principle. Come then what may! My will rules 
fate, as long as I relate everything to this compre- 


*Cf. pp. 28-31, for other references to this “original act of 
freedom.” Schiele, pp. 106-107 has a valuable comment on the 
origins of this conception and of its place in the thought both 
of Schleiermacher and of his contemporaries, especially Fichte. 
The relation between individuality and limitation is also dis- 
cussed on pp. xxxii, xlix, li, 127, in comparing Schleiermacher 
and Spinoza. 


/2 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


hensive purpose, and remain indifferent to external 
conditions and forms of life, considering them all as 
of equal value to me provided only that they ex- 
press the nature of my being and afford new mate- 
rial for its inner cultivation and growth. As long 
as my spirit’s eye keeps in view this object in its 
entirety,* seeing each particular purpose only as con- 
tained in this whole, yet truly seeing in this whole 
all particular aims, as long as I never drop out of 
mind the pursuit that I happen to interrupt, keeping 
my will fixed upon more than I do, relating whatever 
I do to all that I will, just so long does my will rule 
fate, and freely turn to its purposes whatever fate 
may bring. Such a will can never be cheated of its 
object, and in its very conception the idea of fate 
vanishes. Whence then do those changes of human 
fortune, which men feel to be so tyrannous, take 
their rise but in the fact that freedom limits free- 
dom in a community of such wills?* Thus these 
changes are also an effect of freedom, and of my 
own freedom to boot. How could I suffer my 
actions to help form the vicissitudes of other men, 
if I did not demand that those of others should do 
the same for me? Yes, I do demand it most em- 
phatically! Let time move on, and bring me what 
manifold materials it may for my activity, my self- 
development, and for the outward expression of my 
nature. I flinch at nothing, the order in which it 
comes is immaterial to me, and so are all the exter- 
nal conditions. Whatever the active community of 
mankind can produce shall pass before me, shall stir 
and affect me in order to be affected by me in turn, 


* Cf. above pp. 17-18. 


PROSPECT 73 


and in the manner I receive and treat it, I intend 
always to find my freedom and to develop my indi- 
viduality through its outward expression. 

Is this but a vain delusion? Does impotence hide 
behind this sense of freedom? Such is the inter- 
pretation which vulgar natures put upon a thing 
they do not understand! But this empty talk of 
men who debase themselves has long ago ceased 
to echo in my ears; between their point of view and 
mine the living fact renders judgment at every 
moment. When they see time passing, they always 
complain, and they tremble at an hour’s approach! 
Through every change they pass unimproved, ever 
remaining the same vulgar natures that they are. 
But can they cite a single instance in which they 
might not have met the circumstances which con- 
fronted them differently? It would be easy for me 
to crush them still more in the midst of their trou- 
bles, forcing from them the contrite confession that 
the alien tyranny of which they complain is nothing 
but their own inertia, that they did not really want 
what they seemed to want, but only wished to ap- 
pear desirous of it. Thus showing them the base 
limitations of their own consciousness and will, I 
might teach them to believe in a true will and true 
consciousness. 

But whether they learn the truth or no, my own 
belief that I shall meet with nothing that can hin- 
der the progress of my self-development or drive 
me from the goal of my endeavors, lives in me be- 
cause of past acts. Ever since reason obtained the 
mastery of my being, and freedom and self-knowl- 
edge took up their abode in me, I have walked 


74 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


through diverse courses of life with this clear con- 
fidence. While enjoying the beautiful freedom of 
youth I succeeded in the crucial act of casting off 
the mummery in which long and tedious hours of 
educational sacrilege had clothed me;* I learned 
to deplore the brief independence enjoyed by the 
majority of men who allow themselves to be bound 
by new chains; I learned to despise the contempt- 
ible efforts of the lifeless,®> who have forgotten even 
the last trace of the brief dream of freedom, who 
mistake what transpires in youth when freedom 
is just awakening and wish to keep the young faith- 
ful to old ways. In a stranger’s home my sense for 
the beauty of human fellowship was first awak- 
ened ;{ I saw that it requires freedom to ennoble and 
give right expression to the delicate intimacies of 
human nature, which remain forever obscure to the 
uninitiated who respect them only as natural bans.® 
Amid all the diversities of this world’s motley spec- 
tacle I learned to discount appearances and to rec- 
ognize the same reality whatever its garb, and I 
also learned to translate the many tongues that it 
acquires in various circles. Watching the great fer- 

*In connection with this comment on his education in the 
Moravian seminary consult pp. xv-xix, and the notes on pp. 
60. An interesting series of letters between Schleiermacher 
and his father describes the “casting off of the mummery.” 
(Letters, v. 1, pp. 46-67ff.) 

a erhieecnnahes may be thinking in this connection of 
Albertini and other friends of his in the Moravian seminary, 
who relapsed from an abortive emancipation into permanent 


submission to the rule of the brotherhood. (Cf. Schicle, p. 107 
and Dilthey, pp. 15-29ff.; N. E. 19-22 ff. 

~ The reference is to Hi home of the Dohna family in Schlo- 
bitten, where Schleiermacher was happily engaged as tutor 
ay alee See above pp. xxxivff. and Dilthey, pp. 44-61; 


PROSPECT ibe 


ments of life, both the turbulent and the quiet ones,* 
I learned to understand the mentality of mankind, 
and how it cleaves ever to superficialities. In the 
quiet solitude that was my lot I looked to the inner 
nature of things, I took note of all purposes to 
which humanity is committed by its essence, and 
observed all dispositions of the spirit in their ever- 
lasting unity; through living contemplation I 
learned to assess at the right value the dead lan- 
guage of the schools. I have felt joy and pain, I 
know each sorrow and each smile, and in all that 
has happened to me since my real life began, is there 
anything from which my being did not gain strength 
or acquire something new, wherewith to nourish 
my inner life? 

Let the past, therefore, be my security for the 
future. How can the future, being like the past, 
affect me differently if I remain constant to myself? 
I see the content of my life before me clear and 
fixed. I know in what respects my being has already 
achieved its individual form and definition, and by 
acting with thorough consistency on every hand, 
with full and undivided strength,} I shall preserve 
what has thus been achieved. How can I help 
but rejoice in novelty and in variety, which but 
confirms in new and ever different ways the truth 


*T. e., the French Revolution and the intellectual changes in 
Germany. Cf. p. 62 and note * on the same page. See also 
Pp. XXXili-xxxiv, with respect to Schleiermacher’s “quiet soli- 
tude” during these times. ’ 

+ This idea of consistent and even action occurs repeatedly 
(cf. pp. 42, 88) and is to be associated with the quality of 
equanimity that Schleiermacher says is fundamental to his 
character. (See p. 42) Mystics, among them Jakob Boehme, 
boa recommend a similar even-tempered attitude toward all 
things. 


76 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


whereof I am possessed. Am I so certain of myself 
that I do not require’ such further confirmations ?** 
Am I so complete as not to welcome joy and sorrow 
alike, indeed whatever the world calls weal or woe, 
seeing that everything in its own way serves the 
purpose of further revealing my being’s relation- 
ships? If but this be accomplished, of what impor- 
tance is it that I be happy! Moreover, I also know 
what I have not yet made my own, I know where I 
am still adrift amid vague generalities and for a 
long time have painfully felt the lack of an indi- 
vidual point of view. My powers have long been 
busy in these directions, and some day I shall com- 
pass what is lacking, by my activity and medita- 
tions, harmonizing it inwardly with everything 
already mine. There are sciences which I have still 
to explore thoroughly, for my outlook on the world 
can never be complete without their knowledge. 
Many types of humanity are still strange to me; 
there are ages and peoples that I know no better 
than the average man does, my imagination has 
not in its own way entered into their thought and 
character, they occupy no definite place in my pic- 
ture of mankind’s development.t Many activ- 
ities which have no place in my own being I do not 
understand, and I am frequently at a loss how to 
estimate their relation to all that is great and fine 
in humanity. I shall acquire all these things grad- 
ually, one with the other; the fairest prospect opens 
out before me.t What a galaxy of individuals I see 


* Cf. pp. 29-34 with respect to these “confirmations.” 

+ A very characteristic statement of the romanticist interest 
in history. Cf. Herder. See above pp. xxi, xxviii-xxix. 

t“The fairest prospect”: cf. title of this soliloquy. 


PROSPECT 77 


close at hand, men so different from myself yet all 
of them engaged in perfecting the humanity that is 
in them! What an amazing number of learned men 
are about me, who out of pride or hospitality offer 
me the golden fruit of their lives in handsome jars, 
and the plants of distant times and places too, trans- 
planted to the fatherland by their faithful toil!* Can 
fate enchain me so that I shall not be able to ap- 
proach this goal of mine? Can it deny me the 
means of self-development, put me out of easy touch 
with the labors of the present generation and with 
the monuments of the past? Can it cast me out of 
this fair world in which I live into those barren 
wastes where contact with the rest of humanity is 
impossible, where vulgarity surrounds me on all 
sides with its everlasting monotony, and nothing 
lovely, nothing distinct stands out in the thick and 
sodden atmosphere?+ To be sure, this has befallen 
many, yet it can not happen to me; I defy that to 
which thousands have succumbed. A man must 
sell himself in order to become a slave, and fate 
dares bid only for one who offers himself at a price. 
What is it that lures the vacillating person away 
from the place where his spirit prospers? What 
can possibly impel him to throw away the finest 
treasures in cowardly folly, as the fleeing warrior 
‘loes his weapons?® It is the craving for base, ex- 
_ *A. W. Schlegel’s translations of foreign classics were cases 
in point. 

7 The leaders of the Reformed Church were anxious to get 
Schleiermacher away from his unchurchly companions in Ber- 
lin. In 1798 Sack had offered him a position as court-preacher in 
Schwedt. In 1802 events did force him to go to Stolpe, See 


Introduction, pp. livff. Also cf. Letters, v. 1, pp. 178ff. and 
Schiele, p. 108; Dilthey, N. E. pp. 412ff. 


78 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


ternal gain,* it is the excitement of sensual desires 
already jaded so that the familiar draughts no 
longer satisfy. How could this happen to me in 
view of my despising such shadows! I have gained 
the position I occupy by industry and toil, with de- 
liberate effort I have built a world of my own in 
which my spirit can flourish. How are firm con- 
nections like these to be loosened by some transient 
incitement whether of fear or of hope? How is 
some vain bagatelle to lure me from my true home 
and from the circle of my beloved friends? 

But to continue living in this happy sphere and 
to become ever more closely related to it is not 
my only requirement; I long for another world. I 
still have many new ties to form; my heart must 
beat to the law of new loves as yet unknown to me, 
that the relation of these to the rest of my being 
may be revealed. I have experienced every kind 
of friendship, I have tasted the sweet joy of love 
with pure lips, I know what befits me in both 
relationships, what rule of life is appropriate to my 
nature. But the most sacred of all ties has yet to 
lift my life to a new level; some beloved soul and 
I must melt into one being, so that my humanity 
may touch other humanity in the finest of all rela- 
tionships, and I may know the transfigured, higher 
life which will develop at this rebirth of freedom 
in me, the beginning of a new world for my regen- 
erated self. I must be consecrated to paternal 
rights and duties, so that the maximum of power 
which freedom exercises over other free beings may 


* A letter of Schleiermacher’s to his sister (Letters, v. 1, p. 
186) comments on the materialistic office-seeking prevalent in 
Berlin at the time. (See Schiele, p. 108.) See preceding note. 


PROSPECT 79 


not remain dormant in me, that I may show how 
he who believes in freedom preserves and protects 
reason in the young, and how in this great prob- 
lem a discerning spirit can untangle the finest maze 
of his and other’s rights.* But will not fate overreach 
me just in respect to this dearest wish of my heart? 
Will not the world at this point take revenge upon 
my defiant freedom, upon my arrogant disrespect 
for its power? Where may she dwell with whom 
I might suitably link my life? Who can tell me 
whither I must go to seek her? For such a boon 
no sacrifice is too dear, no effort too great! But 
what if I should find her already tied, so that she 
hesitates to come to me?t Shall I be able to liber- 
ate her? And if I do win her, can my will decide 
whether as husband I shall also enjoy fatherhood ??° 
Here I stand at the boundary where my will is lim- 
ited by another freedom, and by the course of life, 
a mystery of nature. I have hope; man can do 
much; by strength of will and serious effort he sur- 
mounts many difficulties. But should hope and 
effort both prove vain, if all is denied me, am I then 
conquered at this point by my fate? Has it then 
really prevented my inner life from reaching a 
higher level, and succeeded by its caprice in limit- 


* Cf. p. 60 and note on the same page. 


+ Eleonore, Schleiermacher’s beloved, was married to a 
preacher named Griinow. This match was childless. Schleier- 
macher thus reflects that he is limited by “another freedom,” 
namely the relationship between Eleonore and Griinow, and 
should this be surmounted, perhaps by the “mystery of nature” 
in respect to childbirth. These difficult circumstances, which 
made this love between Schleiermacher and Eleonore an un- 
happy one, account in some measure for the strained sentiment 
of the ensuing passage (pp. 78-81). See Dilthey, pp. 479ff.; 
N. E. 523ff. And Briefe of this period, 1800-1804. 


80 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


ing my development? The impossibility of outward 
accomplishment does not prevent an inner process ; 
I should pity the world more than myself and my 
beloved, for having lost a beautiful and rare exam- 
ple, a phantom that has strayed from a more perfect 
future into the present, capable of giving warmth 
and life to the world’s dead conceptions. As long 
as we belong to one another, she and I, imagination 
will transport us, though we have not actually met, 
into our lovely paradise. Not in vain have I seen 
the soul of woman in so many different forms, and 
come to know the characteristic charms of her 
sequestered life.* The further I still was from mar- 
riage, the greater was my care to learn the nature 
of its sacred domain; I know what is right there, 
and what is not. I have pictured to myself all its 
possible forms in their perfection, even as a distant, 
future freedom will reveal them, and I know exactly 
which of these forms is appropriate to me. It is 
thus that I also know her, the unknown love, with 
whom I could unite myself for life most intimately, 
and I am already attuned to the lovely life which 
we should lead together. Being obliged in my pres- 
ent unhappy solitude to undertake and arrange 
many things alone, to suppress much, and to prac- 
tice much renunciation and control, in matters both 
great and small, there constantly hovers before me 
a vivid realization of how in that life all this would 
be different and much better. She too must surely 
find it so, wherever she may be, she who is so con- 
stituted that she could love me and find her satis- 


*In his letters to Henriette Herz, Schleiermacher speaks of 
the beneficent influence of women upon his spirit. See Letters, 
v. 1, pp. 187-188 ff. 


PROSPECT 81 


faction in me. The identical longing, something 
far more than an indefinite desire, lifts her, as it 
does me, above the barren actualities for which she 
was not intended,* and if we should suddenly be 
brought together by a stroke of magic, nothing 
would be strange to us; we should walk easily and 
gracefully into our new life as if we had been en- 
gaged through fond acquaintance of long standing. 
And thus, even without that stroke of magic, we 
are not deprived inwardly of our higher life to- 
gether. It is for this life and by it that we are 
fashioned, and only its external manifestation is lost 
to the world.” 

Oh that men knew how to use this divine power 
of the imagination, which alone can free the spirit 
and place it far beyond coercion and limitation of 
any kind, and without which man’s sphere is so 
narrow and precarious! How much actually touches 
each of us in the course of his brief life? How 
many sides of our nature would remain unformed 
and undeveloped, if man’s inner life were limited 
to those few things with which he came into actual 
external contact?+ Yet men are such creatures of 
the senses in respect to morality that they do not 
even trust themselves unless some overt act testi- 
fies to the truth of their feelings. He who puts such 
limitations on himself must live to no purpose in 
the great society of mankind! The opportunity to 
behoid its life and action can be of no avail to him; 
helplessly he must complain of the world’s dull 
monotony and the languor of its movements. He 


* Eleonore was unhappy in her marriage to Griinow. See 
above p. 79 and note + on the same page. 


+Cf. p. 56. 


82 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


is ever wishing for new conditions, for other exter- 
nal provocatives to action, and looking for new 
friends as soon as the old have made what possible 
impression they could upon his soul. Life is every- 
where too slow for him. But suppose it did lead 
him into a thousand new paths at a quicker pace, 
could the infinite be thus exhausted in the brief 
span of an individual life? What men of this type 
cannot even wish for, I actually achieve through 
the inner play of my imagination. For me imagi- 
nation supplies what reality withholds; by virtue of 
it I can put myself in the position of any other per- 
son I notice; my spirit bestirs itself, transforms the 
situation to accord with its nature, and judges in 
imagination’? just how it would act in such a case. 
To be sure, men’s average judgments of other peo- 
ple’s natures and actions are unreliable, for they 
reckon by some artificial rote or useless stereotype; 
and afterwards they act far otherwise than their 
previous judgments would lead them to do. But 
when the exercise of imagination is not merely 
mechanical, but accompanied by inner reflection, as 
it must be wherever there is true life, and when 
judgment is the conscious issue of such reflection, 
then the cbject contemplated, though it be foreign 
to one’s experience and only imagined, shapes the 
spirit, as much as if possessed by it in reality and 
dealt with externally. Thus in the future as in the 
past I shall take possession of the whole world by 
virtue of inner activity,* and I shall make better 
use of things in quiet contemplation than if I had 


* See above, p. xlv for comment on this praise of the 
imagination. 


PROSPECT 83 


to respond to every quickly passing impression with 
an overt act. Every relationship makes a deeper 
impression in this way, the spirit grasps it more 
definitely, and one’s own nature is more perfectly 
reproduced in free, unbiased judgments. What the 
external life really contributes in addition is thus 
only a confirmation and test of an inner life which 
is prior and richer; the development of the spirit is 
not confined within the narrow limits of the exter- 
nal. Hence I no longer complain when my lot in: 
the world is monotonous, nor when its course is 
hectic and irrational. I know that my external life 
will never manifest or perfect all sides of my inner 
nature.* It will never place me in circumstances 
of such magnitude that my action will decide the 
weal and woe of thousands, circumstances in which 
I could give outward proof that in comparison with 
one of reason’s sublime and holy ideals all else is 
nought to me. Perhaps I shall never come into 
open conflict with the world and be able to show 
how little all that the world has power to give or 
to withhold can disturb my inner peace and integ- 
rity. But I myself know how I should act even in 
such circumstances, and I know that my spirit has 
long since been ready and prepared for everything 
of that kind. Thus, though I remain in seclusion, I 
nevertheless live upon the great and open stage of 
the world’s actions. Thus, even in my solitude, I 
have already tied the knot with my beloved; our 
union is a fact, and indeed is the better part of my 
life. Thus, too, I shall surely keep possession of 


* Schleiermacher used this idea in his Christology to criticize 
the view that any external revelation of Christ’s nature could 
be complete. (See Schiele, p. 108.) 


84 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


my only riches, the love of my friends, whatever 
may happen to them or to me in the future. 

Men are indeed fearful that friendship will not 
last long, the mind seems to them fickle; a friend 
may change, his wonted love disappearing with his 
wonted disposition; loyalty is a rare treasure. And 
men are right. For if any of them look beyond util- 
ity in their friendships, it is the mere atmosphere 
surrounding a personality that they are prone to 
love, or perhaps some particular virtue, which they 
never trace to its inner root in the character, and 
if in the course of life’s entanglements they come 
to miss these qualities, they are not ashamed to con- 
fess even after many years that they were mistaken 
in their friends.* I am not favored with a fine fig- 
urey or with anything else that is wont to catch the 
hearts of people at first sight, and yet everyone 
who has not seen into my inner nature creates for 
himself some superficial impression of me. Thus 
I come to be loved for a goodness of heart that I 
should not want to have, or for a modest nature 
which I have not got,!® or for cleverness such as I 
heartily despise. This kind of love, to be sure, has 
often enough deserted me, and it does not belong 
among those riches that I prize. I consider that 
love alone a true possession, which my very self 
evokes and wins over to me anew, time and again. 
How could I count as my own, an affection that is 
called forth entirely by an impression of me due to 
weak discernment. I wash myself clean of any 
such claim, in order not to deceive these people; 


1 OF Bee CF 
+ On the contrary, he was small and slightly deformed. (See 


Schiele, p. 108. 


PROSPECT 85 


but verily their false love shall not pursue me 
either, any longer than I can endure it. To throw 
them off will cost me but a single exhibition of my 
inner nature, one which they cannot mistake; | 
need but lead them straight to that which my own 
spirit treasures as its best, but which they cannot 
endure. Thus I shall rid me of this plague, that 
they who ought to hate me,’® love me and consider 
me one of their number. I shall gladly return to 
them the independence which they sacrificed to a 
false impression. But I can always count on those 
who are really devoted to me, who love my inner 
character; my spirit holds them fast and will never 
forsake them. They have known me, they have 
looked on my soul, and if they love my spirit as it 
is, they must love it ever more deeply,” the more 
it develops and unfolds. 

I am as certain of keeping this treasure as I am 
of my own being; I have never lost a friend who 
has been truly dear to me. You, who in the fresh 
bloom of youth, in the midst of a life that was 
strong and joyous, had to depart from our circle*— 
yes, I can address the dear image that dwells in my 
bosom, and that continues to live on in my life, in 
my love and in my sorrow—never has my heart 
forsaken you. In my thought I have imagined your 
development, even as it would have taken place, had 
you lived to see the flames that now enkindle the 
world ;+ your thinking has merged with mine, our 


* The reference here is to his friend Okely, who was one of 
his closest companions at the Moravian seminary and who sep- 
arated from the brotherhood as Schleiermacher did. Shortly 
after their emancipation, Okely was drowned at Northampton. 
See above p. xvii, also Schiele, p. 109, and Dilthey, pp. 15£f, 23, 
29. + The revolutions taking place. Cf. pp. 62 and note. 


86 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


love’s conversation and the mutual contemplation 
of each other’s souls never ceases, but continues to 
affect me as if you were living beside me as you 
formerly did. And you, my dear friends, who are 
still living in fact, though far from me, and who 
often send fresh impressions of your lives and 
thoughts, what matters distance to us?* We were 
together a long while and were less close to one 
another than we are now; for what is being to- 
gether, save community of spirit? What I do not 
see of your lives I construct for myself; you are 
present to me in all things, both inward and out- 
ward, that would vitally stir your souls, and a few 
words between us serve to confirm my imagination 
or to put it on the right track where I was in chance 
of error. You, who are even now with me in lov- 
ing comradeship, you know how little I desire to 
roam abroad ;} I will stay in my place, and will not 
forego the fair opportunity of exchanging life and 
thought with you at every moment. Where such 
communion is possible, there is my paradise. If you 
are possessed of a different thought, well and good: 
distance cannot separate us.—But can death? Ah, 
what is death, but a greater distance? 

Sombre thought, that implacably shadows all 
meditation upon life and the future!— I can assert 


* This refers to Friedrich Schlegel and Dorothea Veit who 
had left Berlin to live together in Jena (1799). See above p. 
liv, and Schiele, p. 109, and Dilthey, pp. 468 ff. 

+ The reference is particularly to his friends Henriette Herz 
and Eleonore Grunow. See above pp. 78-81, and Schiele, p. 109, 
and Dilthey, pp. 479ff.; N. E. 523ff. 

tIn a letter to his sister Schleiermacher includes a portion 
of this passage on death, with the following explanation: “This 
passage, which I have copied from a little book of mine, comes 
straight from my soul; it is a trifle obscure, like the whole 
book, but when you once understand it, it is right enough.” 
(See Letters, v. 1, p. 251ff. and Schiele, p. 109.) 


PROSPECT 87 


that death will never part my friends from me, for 
I take up their lives in mine, and their influence 
upon me never ceases. But it is I myself who 
slowly perish in their death. The life of friendship 
is a sequence of harmonizing chords, to a keynote 
which dies out when the friend passes away. Of 
course, within oneself reechoing tones are heard 
without cease for a long while and the music is 
carried on; but the accompanying harmony in him, 
of which I was the keynote, has died away, and it 
was this that gave me my key, just as I gave him 
his. What I produced in him is no more, and there- 
by a part of my life is lost. Every creature that 
loves another kills something in that other through 
its death, and he who loses many of his friends 
is finally slain himself at their hands, since cut off 
from influencing those who were his world, his 
spirit is driven inward and forced to consume itself. 
There are two cases in which man’s end is inevit- 
able. He must perish for whom the death of 
friends has irretrievably destroyed the balance be- 
tween the inner and the outer life. And he too must 
perish for whom this balance is otherwise destroyed, 
he who has attained the perfection of his individual- 
ity, and in whom, therefore, no further activity is 
essential, even though he be surrounded by the rich- 
est of worlds. A completely perfected being is a 
god, it could not endure the burden of life,18 and 
has no place in the world of mankind.* Death, 
therefore, is a necessity, and may it be the mission 
of my freedom to bring me nearer to this necessity. 
May it be my highest goal to be able to wish to die !F 


* Cf. pp. 34, 48, 70. 
+ Cf. Novalis’s Hymnen an die Nacht, and Fragmentarisches. 


88 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


I wish to give myself to my friends so completely, 
and embrace their whole being so closely, that each 
may help to slay me with sweet pangs, when he 
leaves me, and I wish to perfect myself more and 
"more, so that my soul may in this way also approach 
ever nearer the wish to die. The death of man is 
always the result of these two elements combined; 
not all my friends will leave me ere [ die, nor shall 
I ever actually reach my goal of perfection. I shall 
approach my end from all sides in just proportion 
as befits the equipoise of my nature; of this good 
fortune I am assured by my perfect tranquillity’ 
and my quiet contemplative life.* For a nature 
such as mine the highest point is reached when its 
inner development seeks an external embodiment, 
since every kind of nature in its perfection ap- 
proaches its opposite. The idea of perpetuating 
my inner being, and with it the whole outlook which 
humanity gave me, in a work of art is for me a 
premonition of death.2°t As I first became aware 
of my maturity, this idea was born in me; now it 
waxes daily and assumes a definite form. Prema- 
turely, I know, and yet voluntarily I shall release it 
from my mind, before the fire of life has died in 
me. For should I allow the work to ripen and 
grow perfect within me, my very being itself would 
pass away as soon as its faithful copy was ready for 
the world. It would have achieved its end. 


* Cf. pp. 42ff. and note on p. 75. 

+ Cf. pp. 34, 48. 

t Schleiermacher played with the characteristically “roman- 
tic” idea of putting his point of view into a novel, but never 
actually carried out the project. It would have meant “ap- 
proaching his opposite,” for as he says (p. 34 above), his was 
not the artist’s imagination. Cf. pp. xxxviii-xl above, also 
Schiele, p. 109, and Dilthey, pp. 446ff.; N. E. 490ff. 


V 
YOURE PAN DiicAGE 
S THE STROKE of the clock tolls the hours, 


and the sun’s course measures out the years, 
my life, as I am well aware, draws ever nearer the 
hour of death. But does it also approach old age, 
weak and broken old age, of which everyone bitterly 
complains, when without warning the zest of joy- 
ous youth has slipped away, and all health of spirit, 
all exuberance is gone? Why do men permit life’s 
golden years to pass, and sighing bend their necks 
beneath a self-imposed yoke? There was a time 
when I myself believed the privileges of youth did 
not befit manhood; I thought to conduct myself 
quietly and prudently, preparing for years more 
drab by a wise resolve of renunciation.* My spirit 
however, would not content itself within such nar- 
row bounds, and I soon repented this life of bare 
economy. At the very first summons joyous youth 
returned, and ever since has held me in its protect- 
ing embrace. Were I now convinced that youth 
would escape me with the flight of years, I should 
voluntarily hasten to meet an early death, lest fear 
of certain misery to come embitter every good of 
the present, and incapacitate my life until finally I 
deserved an even worse end. 


* Cf. Briefe, v. 4, pp. 16-42, for the personal experiences re- 
ferred to. 


90 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


But I know that this cannot be true, because it 
should not be. Shall the free and immeasurable life 
of the spirit be spent before the life of the flesh 1s 
ended, which contains the seeds of death in its very 
first pulsations? Shall not my imagination always 
contemplate beauty with its full and wonted 
strength? Can I not always count on buoyancy of 
spirit, responsiveness to good, and warmth of heart? 
Am I to listen with dread to the waves of time, and 
see them grind and channel me until I give way? 
Tell me, O heart, how many times the time just 
now spent upon this wretched thought may I still 
expect to live before these horrors come to pass? 
Could I count them, I should think a thousand times 
as brief as one. But be not a fool, to prophecy the 
spirit’s strength in terms of time, for time can never 
be its measure! The stars in their courses do not 
traverse equal distances in equal times; you must 
seek a higher calculus to comprehend their motion. 
And should the spirit follow meaner laws than they? 
No, nor does it do so. Old age, soured, bare, and 
hopeless, fetches many prematurely, and some evil 
spirit breaks off the bud of their youth before it 
has scarcely blossomed; others keep their vigor 
long; though white, their heads are unbowed, a fire 
still animates their eyes, and happy laughter graces 
their lips. Why should I not successfully fight off 
the death that lurks in hiding for me, even longer 
than he who has maintained his prime the longest? 
Ignoring the toll of years and the body’s decay, why 
should I not by sheer force of will cling to youth’s 
dear divinity until my last breath is drawn? For 
what is to explain this difference in ageing, if not 


YOUTH AND AGE 91 


force of will? Is the spirit forsooth of a finite size 
and measure, which can be spent and exhausted? 
Is its strength used up by action and dissipated in 
every movement? Is it only misers who have been 
chary of their deeds that enjoy long life? If it be 
so, let shame and scorn smite all whose old age 
wears a fresh and happy look; for he deserves scorn 
who has been miserly with his youth. 

Were time actually the measure of man’s life 
and destiny, I should rather realize all my spiritual 
possibilities in a brief span; I should want to live 
a shert life that I might keep young and vital while 
it lasted! What good are rays of light thinly diffused 
over a wide surface? There can be no revelation of 
power in them, no effective accomplishment. Of 
what avail is it to economize and conserve action, 
if you must weaken its inner content, and if finally 
you have nothing left anyway? Rather spend your 
life in a few years with brilliant prodigality, so that 
you may enjoy the sense of your strength, and be 
able to survey what you have amounted to. But 
man’s measure and his destiny are not temporal; 
the spirit will not submit to such empirical delimi- 
tation. For what is there to break its power? What 
can it lose of its being by activity and by pouring 
itself out to others? What is there to consume it? 
I feel myself enriched and clarified by every action, 
stronger, and more sound; for in every act I receive 
some nourishment from humanity’s common store, 
and in the process of growth my nature assumes a 
more definite character. Is this true only because 
I am still climbing up the hill of life? Perhaps, but 
when will this happy condition suddenly be re- 


92 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


versed? When shall I begin to decline instead of 
growing by activity? And how will this great 
transformation be announced? If it comes, I can 
not help but recognize it, and if I recognize it, I 
shall rather choose to die, than to live in protracted 
misery, beholding in myself the impotence of human 
existence.* 

The decline of vigor and of strength is an ill that 
man inflicts upon himself; old age is but an idle 
prejudice, an ugly fruit of the mad? delusion that 
the spirit is dependent on the body! But I know 
this madness, and its evil fruit shall not succeed in 
poisoning my healthy life. Does the spirit inhabit 
the fibres of my flesh, or are the two identical, that 
it needs must stiffen like a mummy when they are 
petrified? Let the body have its due. If the senses 
grow dull, and our impressions of reality’s earthly 
images grow faint, then surely memory too will be 
dimmed, and many pleasures and delights will fade. 
But is this the life of the spirit? Is this the ever- 
lasting youth that I worship? If such things had 
power to weaken the spirit, how long had I already 
been old age’s slave! How long ago should I have 
bade my youth a last farewell! But nothing that 
has hitherto been unable to disturb my energetic 
life, shall ever succeed in doing so. Am I not sur- 
rounded by others who have sharper senses and 
stronger bodies? Will they not always be about me 
as they are now to offer the service of their love? 


* Cf. Briefe, v. 4, p. 39 in re suicide. 


+ Schleiermacher in fact had to contend with certain physical 
handicaps, and was of the opinion he could not possibly live a 
long life. See Letters, v. 1, p. 183-184 and elsewhere. Refer- 
ence is made further on to his weak eyesight. 


YOUTH AND AGE 93 


To lament my physical decline is of all things fur- 
thest from my mind! Why should that trouble me? 
Would it be such a misfortune, if I did forget the 
events of yesterday? Are the day’s minutia the 
world in which I live? Is the sphere of my inner 
life limited to the impressions I get of those par- 
ticular things that happen to exist within the nar- 
row confines of my immediate physical environment? 
Whoever has loved youth only because it excelled 
in these immediate physical advantages, and whose 
inferior perception cannot grasp a higher calling, 
may justly complain of old age and its misery. But 
who will dare maintain that the presence of those 
great and sublime thoughts which the spirit pro- 
duces out of its own depths is dependent on the 
body, and that a sense for true reality hinges on the 
functioning of one’s frame? In order to contem- 
plate humanity do I need this eye, the nerve of 
which already begins to weaken when my life is 
but half over?* Or must my blood, which even now 
begins to flow slowly, rush more impetuously 
through my narrow veins, if I am to love all who 
deserve my love? Does the power of my will de- 
pend on the strength of my muscles, or on the mar- 
row of my bones? Does courage depend upon my 
feeling in good health? Those who are thus physi- 
cally favored are often enough deceived; death lurks 
in hidden corners, and suddenly springs upon them 
with sardonic laughter. What harm, then, if I 
already know, where my own death lies waiting? 
But perhaps repeated pain, or manifold sufferings, 
can so depress the spirit as to incapacitate it for 


* See note p. 92. 


94 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


its Own unique and proper functions? Why! to 
resist such pains is also a function of the spirit; 
they too call forth sublime thoughts for their relief. 
And the spirit can find no evil in anything that 
merely changes its activity from one form to 
another. 

Yes, in my advanced years I shall still have the 
same strength of spirit, and I shall never lose my 
keen zest for life. That which now rejoices me, 
shall ever give me joy; my will shall remain strong, 
and my imagination active, and nothing shall wrest 
from me the magic key which opens the mysterious 
portals of the higher world; nor shall love’s ardent 
flame ever be quenched. I will not see the dread 
infirmities of old age; I vow a mighty scorn of all 
adversity that does not touch the aim of my exist- 
ence, and I pledge myself to an eternal Youth.* 

But am I not repudiating good along with evil? 
Is old age sheer weakness when compared with 
youth? Why then is it that mankind honors a 
grey head, even though it shows no trace of this 
eternal youth, freedom’s finest fruit? Alas, often 
it is only because some people lead their lives in an 
atmosphere like that of a cellar, which will for a 
long time preserve a corpse from decay, and such 
men are popularly venerated as sacred bodies. Peo- 
ple think of the soul as like a grape-vine; be 
it even of poor quality, it improves and is more 
highly prized when it grows old. Nay more! they 
talk much of virtues peculiar to life’s riper years, 
of sober wisdom, cool self-possession, a rich experi- 


*F. Schlegel wrote to Schleiermacher: “Youth is fleeting.” 
(Briefe, v. 3, p. 84.) The latter answers, “Youth may be eter- 
nal.” (Ibid., p. 89.) (Cf. Schiele, p. 110.) 


YOUTH AND AGE 95 


ence, a poised and unassailable perfection in one’s 
understanding of this variegated world. Youth’s 
charm, they say, is only the evanescent blossom of 
human nature, but the mature fruit is old age and 
what it brings the soul. Then only are the inner- 
most depths of human nature ripe for enjoyment 
when they have been completely purified by air and 
sun, and brought to some significant and beautiful 
perfection. O ye northern barbarians, who do not 
know the happier clime, where fruit and blossom 
burst forth together, and race side by side in all 
their glory to a joint fulfillment!* Is the world so 
cold and unfriendly that the human spirit may not 
emulate this higher beauty and perfection? Of 
course, everyone cannot have all that is good and 
beautiful, but diverse gifts are given to diverse per- 
sons and not apportioned to the different seasons of 
life. Each man is a plant of unique growth, but 
he can continually bear fruit and flower at the same 
time according to his kind. Whatever can be har- 
moniously realized in a single individual, he can 
cultivate simultaneously and possess permanently; 
he not only can but should. 

How does man acquire discreet wisdom and ripe 
experience? Are they granted him from on high. 
and is it foreordained that he shall not receive them 
until he can prove that youth is passed? I am con- 
scious of acquiring them at this very moment; it is 
precisely the urge of youth and the quickened life 
of the spirit that brings them forth. To inspect all 


* The appeal of Italy! Cf. Goethe’s Mignon, and Faust; 
also Nietzsche’s treatment of the antithesis between northern 
and Mediterranean culture that runs through German history 
and thought. 


96 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


things, to absorb them in the innermost sense, to 
master the force of random emotions lest tears 
either of joy or grief dim the spirit’s vision or cloud 
its impressions, to proceed readily from one thing 
to another, and being of insatiable energy to assim- 
ilate even the experience of others by rehearsing 
their deeds in imagination, such is the active life 
of youth, and such too is the process by which wis- 
dom and experience come into being. The livelier 
the imagination, the more active the spirit, the more 
is their growth hastened and prospered. And when 
they have been acquired, is the vigorous life that 
produced them no longer appropriate? Are then 
these supreme virtues ever perfected? If they were 
born in youth and by reason of youth, will they not 
always require the same energy to maintain and 
further their growth? Mankind, however, is de- 
ceived by a hypocritical vanity in respect to this its 
greatest blessing, and its hypocrisy is rooted in 
depths of narrowest ignorance. Youth’s restless- 
ness is supposed to imply the urge of a seeker, and 
seeking is not thought becoming to one who has 
reached the end of life; such a one should clothe 
himself in the repose of idleness,? that respected 
symbol of life’s fulfillment, and in emptiness of de- 
sire,* the sign of complete understanding. Such 
should be the deportment of old age, they say, lest 
seeming still to be a seeker, man descend into the 
grave amid laughter mocking his vain efforts.* But 
only those who have sought what is cheap and vul- 
gar may pride themselves on having found all they 
desire! What I aspire to know and make my own 
is infinite, and only in an infinite series of attempts 


YOUTH AND AGE 97 


can I completely fashion my own being. The spirit 
that drives man forward, and the constant appeal 
of new goals, that can never be satisfied by past 
achievements, shall never depart from me. It is 
man’s’ peculiar pride, to know that his goal is in- 
finite, and yet never to halt on his way, to know 
that at some point on his journey he will be en- 
gulfed, and yet when he sees that point, to make 
no change either in himself or in his circumstances, 
nor in any wise to slacken his pace. Hence it is 
fitting that he should ever pursue his way in the 
carefree buoyancy of youth. I shall never consider 
myself old until I am perfect, and I shall never be 
perfect, because I know and desire what I should. 
Furthermore, the excellences of old age cannot 
conflict with those of youth, for not only do the 
qualities esteemed in old age develop in youth, but 
old age in its turn nourishes the young and tender 
life. It is generally conceded that youth fares bet- 
ter when ripe old age takes an interest in it, and in 
the same way a man’s own inner youth is enhanced, 
if he acquires in early life the spiritual qualities of 
maturity. A practiced eye surveys its field more 
quickly, and a person of experience grasps a situ- 
ation® more readily, and that love which springs 
from a higher level of self-development must needs 
be more intense. Wherefore I shall preserve my 
youthful vigor and I shall enjoy its zest unto the 
last. Unto the last I shall gain in strength and in 
vitality with every act, and with each step in my 
self-development I shall become more capable of 
love. I shall marry my youth to my old age, that 
the latter too may enjoy exuberance and be perme- 


9 


98 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


ated with vivifying warmth. For what is it, after 
all, of which men complain in old age? not of con- 
sequences that necessarily follow from experience, 
wisdom, and self-development. Does a treasury 
of accumulated ideas make a man less sensitive, so 
that nothing either old or new interests him? Do 
established words of wisdom at last give way to 
disquieting doubts that vitiate all action? Is self- 
development a consuming fire that leaves the soul 
an inert mass? The general complaint is only that 
youth has fled. And why does youth fail man? 
Because in his youth he has lacked maturity. Let 
there be a double marriage. Let the strength of 
years enter into your robust spirit at once to pre- 
serve its youth, that in later years youth may pro- 
tect you against the weakness of old age. The 
usual division of life into youth and age ought 
never to be made. He debases himself who wishes 
first to be young, and then old, who allows himself 
to be controlled first by what is called the spirit of 
youth, and only afterwards wishes to follow what 
is considered the counsel of maturity. Life cannot 
bear this separation of its elements. There is a 
two-fold activity of the spirit that should exist in 
its entirety at every time of life, and it is the per- 
fection of human development ever to become more 
intimately and more clearly conscious of both its 
aspects, assigning to each its own peculiar and 
proper function. 

The indiyidual existence of a plant is perfected 
in its blossom, but the world attaches supreme value 
to its fruit, which serves as protection to the seed 
of future generations, and is a gift which everv 


YOUTH AND AGE 99 


creature must offer in order that the rest of nature 
may receive his life. So too, the supreme thing for 
a human being is the spirited life of youth, and woe 
to him whom it forsakes, but the world desires him to 
grow old, that his life may bear fruit, the sooner 
the better. Wherefore set your life in accord with 
this fact once and for all. It is a lesson which old 
age teaches men all too late, when time has dragged 
them thither in its chains, but by a firm resolution 
of your free will you may at once make it your rule 
in all matters upon which the world has a claim. 
Wherever fruit appears as the spontaneous result 
of your life’s free flowering, let it develop to the 
world’s advantage, and may there be hidden in it 
a fertile seed destined to unfold one day into a new 
life of its own. But let whatever you offer to the 
world be fruit.7 Do not sacrifice the least part of 
your being itself in mistaken generosity! Let no 
bud be broken off, nor the smallest leaf plucked, 
through which you receive nourishment from the 
surrounding world! On the other hand, do not put 
forth mere foliage,* unpruned and unpleasing, in 
which some poisonous insect may hide and sting 
you. If it is not part of your own proper develop- 
ment, or the growth of new members, let it be gen- 
uine fruit, engendered within the heart of the spirit, 
a free act testifying to its youthful creative energy.* 
But when it is once conceived, such fruit should 
emerge from the province of the inner life; then let 


* Adopting Schleiermacher’s distinction between fruit and 
blossom, one may say that his Speeches on Religion were fruit 
of his life, the Soliloquies blossom. And they appeared almost 
simultaneously, as in that “happy clime”’ (see p. 95 above)! 
See also Introduction, p. xlvi. 


100 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


its further development conform to the laws of out- 
ward behavior. Then let shrewdness and sober wis- 
dom and cool discretion take it in charge, that what 
your love generously intended for the world may 
actually prove to its benefit. Then weigh means 
and end with care, take heed and be circumspect 
with cautious misgiving, seek counsel of work and 
power, despise no pains, and wait for propitious 
moments with untiring patience. 

Woe unto me, if my youth, with its vitality that 
brooks no restraint and its restless imagination, 
should ever meddle with the affairs of old age, and 
failing to succeed in the realm of action, which is 
not its proper province, should thereby waste the 
strength of its inner life! Only such as are ignorant 
of inner energies® may perish thus, those who, mis- 
understanding the spiritual urge, wish to be young 
in their outward behavior. They expect fruit to 
ripen in a moment even as a blossom opens in a 
night; each of their projects crowds upon the heels 
of another, and none matures. Every enterprise, 
which they commence, is destroyed in the rapid 
alternation of their conflicting plans. And when 
they have thus wasted the loveliest half of life in 
vain attempts, doing and achieving nought, because 
to do and to accomplish was their only aim, then 
they condemn the free imagination and the youth- 
ful life. Nought but old age is left them, weak and 
miserable as it must be, wherever youth has been 
used up and driven out. Lest it flee from me also, 
I shall not abuse it; I shall not expect its service in 
matters that are not its proper sphere; I shall keep 
it within the limits of its own domain, that it may 


YOUTH AND AGE 101 


meet with no injury. But there in truth it shall 
have full sway, now and forever in unmolested free- 
dom, nor shall any law, the proper sphere of which 
is to govern external actions, cramp my inner life. 

May my inner activity and all that affects it, in 
so far as the world has no claim upon it and it 
concerns only my own growth, bear youth’s colors 
everlastingly, and may it proceed wholly from an 
inner impulse with a gracious and perfect joy. O 
my soul, let no rule be imposed on your coming in 
and going out, your hours of meditation and re- 
flection! Heartily despise such alien legislation 
and banish the thought which would put the free 
movement of your life under the sign of a dead let- 
ter. Let no one persuade you that one thing must 
wait upon the completion of another! Proceed, if 
you like, with buoyant step; what you have done 
lives on in you, and you will find it again when you 
return. Do not anxiously ponder what to begin and 
what will come of it! You alone are in the making, 
and whatever you can will, is also part of you.?? 
Shun frugal behavior! Let life be unconfined: no 
power is ever lost, unless you repress it within your- 
self, and leave it unused. Let not your will for 
today be determined by your wish for tomorrow! 
Take shame, free spirit that you are, if ought within 
you should become subservient to the rest; no part 
of your being may be mere means to an end, for one 
is as precious as another. Wherefore whatever you 
become, let it be for its own sake. A stupid self- 
deception to think that you ought to want what 
you do not want! Let not the world tell you how 
you should serve it and when! Laugh to scorn its 


102 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


silly pretensions, spirited youth, and do not brook 
restraint. Whatever you give is a gift of your free- 
dom, for the resolve to benefit the world must issue 
from within you. Attempt nothing unless it pro- 
ceeds freely from a love and desire within your soul. 
And let no limit be set upon your love, no measure 
whether of kind or of duration! If it is your own, 
who can demand it of you? Is not its law entirely 
within you? Then who may command it in any 
respect? Be ashamed to depend on other’s opinions 
in such matters of holiest import. Blush for that 
false shame which fears lest people may not under- 
stand you when you reply to the questioner: “Such 
is the reason of my love.’ Let not yourself be 
troubled in the fullness and joy of your inner life 
by anything external whatsoever! Who would 
choose to combine within himself elements that are 
incompatible, and thus be soured in his soul? Grieve 
not for what you cannot be or do! Who would 
be ever gazing toward the impossible in empty 
aspiration and turning covetous eyes upon goods 
that are not his? 

Thus is my inner life joyous and untrammelled! 
And how should time and destiny ever teach me 
another philosophy? I give the world its due; in 
my outward behavior I strive for order and wisdom, 
discretion and proportion. Indeed, what reason have 
I to disdain anything that proceeds so readily and 
freely and happily from my inner being and its 
activity? By observing the world one will gain all 
this in rich measure without effort. But in be- 
holding himself, man triumphs over discourage- 
ment and weakness, for from the consciousness 


YOUTH AND AGE 103 


of inner freedom there blossoms eternal youth and 
joy. On these have I laid hold, nor shall I ever 
give them up, and soI can see with a smile my eyes 
growing dim, and my blond locks turning white. 
Nought can happen to affright my heart, and the 
pulse of my inner life will beat with vigor until 
death. 


SCHLEIERMACHER’S REVISIONS 
OPODTL ES) uO) UES 


In the second and third editions of the Soliloquies, 1810 and 
1822, Schleiermacher made significant changes in the text. Pas- 
sages so changed are indicated by numerals in my translation, 
which follows the first edition, and the corresponding changes 
are now given here. pp. 104-112. 

As explained in the Preface (pp. v-vi) I have included only 
such revisions of the text as involve material changes in the 
meaning, omitting all changes which Schleiermacher seems to 
have made for purely stylistic reasons, since the literary sig- 
nificance of these would tend to be modified, if not lost, in 
translation. 

I am entirely indebted to F. M. Schiele’s critical edition of 
the Monologen (referred to as Schiele) for the detailed com- 
parison of Schleiermacher’s three versions involved in these 
notes, and with slight modifications the following system of 
signs, used in citing the changes, has also been borrowed from 
him. 

A Original text of 1800. 

B_ Text of 1810. 

C Text of 1822. 

The portion of A modified in B and C is printed in italics. 
If the change is a substitution made in both B and C, the sub- 
stituted passage follows immediately upon the italicized passage 
without intervening signs. If the substitution occurs only in 
B, then the sign B intervenes, if only in C, then C. Additions 
are indicated by italicizing the word which immediately pre- 
cedes them, and then printing: B, or C, or BC (when both) 
adds. Deletions are indicated by italicizing the deleted passage 
and following it with the words: Omit from B, or C, or BC. 


OFFERING 


1 No choicer—No more confidential. 

2 The highest—The most intimate. 

3 Enduring . . . granted you—Dependable, for throughout 
life you will know the joy, which this pure insight into a fel- 
low-being has aroused. 

* Thought—Murmuring. 


NOTES—REFLECTION 105 


REFLECTION 


5 Very natural—Oft recurring. ; 
6 Tife—C adds: revealing all the hidden springs of action. 
7 Whole—Essential. 


8 Become . . . Eternal—C: attain an immediate awareness 
of your relations to the Infinite and Eternal. 
9Jike . . . grave—With gloomy fanaticism, like unto that 


which kills wives or slaves beside a husband’s grave. 

10 Know—C: find therein. 

11 Greatest pleasures—(1 have here followed C in the text 
above as giving the most consistent sense). A and B read: 
“good therein.” 

12 To create . . . beauty—To make of his life something 
charming and admirable. 

138 Their . . . ear—C: I am given to understand their sense 
of life as like the mood of an untrained listener . . . his 
Sars Ae 

144 permanent creation—Like the artist’s instrument (C: 
voice) whence that harmony proceeds. 

15 Only—I have a clear vision of. 

16 [5 free (omit). 


17 Transmuted . . . life—Viewed as part of a free, inner life. 

18 Knows—C adds: well how to distinguish. 

19 What man . . . world—Self and not-self, alike in his life 
and in the world. 

20 What the . . . primary—To the multitude the external 


world, the world emptied of spirit, is the primary and greatest 
reality. 


21To me . . . reflected—For me the spirit, the inner 
world, opposes itself boldly to the outer world, the realm of 
matter, of things. Does not the spirit’s union with a body point 
to its greater union with everything corporeal? Do I not grasp 
the outer world by force of my senses? Do I not carry the 
eternal forms of things forever within me? And hence, do I 
not recognize these things only by the reflected light of my 
inner being? 

22 Ts there . . . conscious thereof? (omit from BC). 

23 All those . . . free doing—Thus for me the earth is the 
stage of my own free activity, and in every feeling, however 
much the outer world may seem to force it on me, in those 
feelings too wherein I sense the kinship of material existence 
with Universal Being, there is free, inner action on my part. 
[The point here is that even in the religious feelings of abso- 
lute dependence man’s soul is active and not entirely passive. 
See pp. 141-142, 154. (Slight differences exist between B and 
C here.) | 


106 SCHLEIERMACHER ’S SOLILOQUIES 


24 Every real . . . knead me—There is always some influence 
passing from me to it also, and I do not feel myself limited by 
it in any different sense than by my own body. But what I truly 
regard as existing independently of me and limiting me as a 
finite and particular being, what I consider to be the real world 
endowed with omnipresence and omnipotence, is the eternal 
community of spiritual beings, their influence upon each other, 
their mutual development, the sublime harmony of freedom. 
And it is fitting that this reality should fashion and transform 
the surface of my being. This heavenly world alone shall 
mold me. 

25 World—C adds: of spiritual beings. 

26 Perceptions I have—Elements. 

27 Holy—C: happy. 

28 Plays the melody—Sets the harmony. 

29 But—To be sure. 

30 Jt mdicates . . . I do.—It determines what results are 
still possible and what not, but it does not determine the in- 
trinsic strength of my effort to secure them. 

81 Whether external . . . activity—(I have inserted this clause 
from B and C in order to bring out the meaning of A better.) 

82 Objective resuli—Valid for others, too. 

33 An illusion . . . necessity—A mask behind which there 
hides sometimes a comic and then again a tragic, deceptive 
necessity. 

34 Reveals . . . being—Refers me to my being in its entirety. 

35 Without being . . . nature—C: without longing to lose 
himself in thinking of the infinite realm of being in all its 
forms and gradations? 

36 Spirit’s action—C: life of the spirit. 

87 Perhaps—For many. 

38 Ultimate . . . thought—C: depths of meditation. 

39 Intimate (this from B and C). A: sacred. 

40 Consideration—C: contemplation. 


41 In what . . . acting—Observe the form and limit appropri- 
ate to your action. 
42 The spirit . . . but itself—The spirit creates its world by 


the force of its will, and the activity, which manifests itself in 
the variety of its creation, is one of purest freedom; at rest in 
action, ever conscious of its immutable identity, it leads a 
blessed life. For therein it requires nothing but itself, and 
ats) te ees. 

43 Tamenting—Believing. 


NOTES—SOUNDINGS 107 


SOUNDINGS 


1 Certain—C adds: but tries to reckon entirely with unknown 
quantities. 

2 The inevitable—C: A constant. 

3 What is truly human—C: reason. 

4 Those feelings . . . brutes—The lower feelings and im- 
pressions, renouncing those that are most distinctive of 
humanity. 

5 Precincts—B and C add: and losing true self-respect. 

6 Circle of humantity—C: community he deserted. 

7 Discovered humanity—C: received the vision of humanity. 

8 Humanity—C : reason. 

®Into . . . brutishness—C: to the unconnected and confused 
impressions of animal sense. 

10 Humanity—C : life. 

11 By reason of his—In so far as each has his own. 

12 That man—C: that the inner man. 


13 Of one . . . same—In each case like unto all other individ- 
uals. 
14 Thus . . . mankind—Thus man’s awakening is ever 


gradual and not always complete. 
15 Rising to—C: looking up to. 


16 Which . . . herself—With the development of which free- 
dom has identified herself. 
17 Expressing . . . higher being—C: revealing to be 


sure all the elements of humanity, but only in a crude mass, 
like a mineral which has lacked the conditions for its charac- 
teristic crystallization, if they have not grasped the idea of 
individual wniqueness. 

18 To view . . . friction—That humanity should exist merely 
as a homogeneous mass, split up externally to be sure into units, 
but these all inwardly alike. I was incredulous that the spir- 
itual uniqueness of individuals should be a merely transient 
phenomenon produced by external contacts and frictions, but 
without any inner foundation. (There are minor variations in 
B and C. See pp. 123, 126ff., 138ff. for the development of 
this theme: the basis of individuality in Schleiermacher’s 
thought. ) 

19 4//—C: all variations. 

20 Alone—C: in particular. 

21 Whether . . . from it—Whether he may to a certain ex- 
tent separate his individual being again from universal human- 
ity. (There are minor differences between B and C.) 


22 Knowing it?—-B and C add: What often appears to be 
such an inner change is certainly either mere appearance, 


108 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


caused by a change in outward circumstances, or else it is a 
correction of our first impressions, revealing more deeply the 
inner nature of someone whom we had at first misjudged 
through haste. (C adds further) But as for my own self- 
knowledge, above all. 

23 Are concealed—C: are harmoniously concealed. 

24T am convinced . . . seldom reaches—Of all differ- 
ences in human behavior and vocation, which reveal differ- 
ences in men’s natures too, the one that strikes me most, as being 
pertinent to my own case, is the following. There is too great 
a contrast between developing one’s inner humanity into dis- 
tinctness by manifold activity, on the one hand, and on the 
other, projecting it into works of art which clearly convey to 
everyone what one is trying to express, for both of these gifts 
to be granted to the same individual in an equal measure. 
(Cf. pp. 87-88.) Of course, he who is still in the outer court 
of moral development, who fears as an initiate to limit himself 
by firm decision, will like to combine something of both in his 
crude essays at life with the result that he will not go far in 
either direction. Most lives are in this state of indetermina- 
tion. But whoever has entered a little further into the sanctu- 
ary of morality will soon attach a preference to one of these 
two courses, and will preserve but few connections with the 
other. Not till the very end of life’s development do the two 
again seem to approach each other, and to combine them is 
the privilege of a perfection that man seldom reaches. 

25 Observation—C adds: of others. 

26 To my thought—To my own impulses. (Then C adds): I 
behold what the artist does with reverence, but . . 

27 J like—C: I abandon myself to. 

287 do . . . expressed—C: And if I must of necessity ex- 
press my thoughts, I am never concerned to eliminate every 
trace of a refractory element in my materials and to produce 
something perfect, as the artist is. 

29 Tearns—B adds: in quiet meditation. 

80 In order—Not only. 

31 Fiver determining—But also to determine. 

82 Jf—C: as far as. 

33] . . . otherwise—C: I no longer expect to ever get be- 
yond it. 


84 Realize themselves—C adds: to absorb spiritually all that 
surrounds them. 


35 Next act—C: future acts. 


36 Se vat (C begins a new paragraph with this sen- 
tence. 


87 Those—C: Those of my friends. 
38 Science—B and C add: except incidentally. 
89 The slavery . . . began—slavery to alien influences. 


NOTES THE WORLD 109 


40 But whatever . . . being—C: but less than other men will 
I have to retrace my steps, for whatever I do embrace will have 
become my own and will bear my impress. Whatever part of 
the world I am permitted to understand will by this course be 
reconstructed within me and taken up into my being. 

41 Iyner—C: acquired. 

42 This outward . . . belongs—This outward side of him has 
little to do with my love for him, which does not feed upon 
this, nor is as much excited and rejoiced thereat as in the case 
of those who do not previously know the inner man. My expec- 
tancy is not so tense in regard to his acts as is theirs for whom 
everything depends upon successful results. All this . 

43 Source—C adds: that they have never been aimed at merely 
pleasing, and still less motivated by stubborn partisanship. 

44 They are—C adds: never have I been so overwhelmed by 
congeniality in particular respects as to deceive myself about 
deeper inner differences. 


45 Opposites . . . each other—Those whose paths are far 
apart approach one another. 
46 4 person . . . neighborhood——The more his mind aspires 


to universality, the more a man engaged in self-culture feels 
attracted by various spheres, and people who are rooted in one 
or another oi them are thus led to think he belongs with them. 
The more individualized I become, the more need a person will 
have for comprehensive appreciation and for an outgoing love 
toward character that is different from his own, if his under- 
standing of me and his attachment is to be permanent. 


THE WORLD 


1 Reason—C: understanding. 

2 From above—C: is it, one wonders, from above or from 
below? 

3 His own service—For the service of his outward existence. 

4The strength of his spirit—The power of his mind over 
matter. 

5 The consciousness . . . body—An unwonted sense of phys- 
ical power. 

8 The concept—C: the realm. 

™ The work—C: the common work. 

8 Perfection!—B and C add: To what purpose is an increased 
power over physical nature if it does not promote the life of 
one’s spirit? Why boast of your outward co-operation if it 
does not promote spiritual community? Health and strength 
are, to be sure, great goods, but do you not despise him who 
only wants to make an exhibition of them? 


110 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


® Companion—C : friend. 

10 Flevating—B and C add: by the image of a love, to whom 
he could devote himself and in whom he could find full life. 

11 The order of sentences from here on through line ...... 
on page ... is radically altered in B and C, and there are con- 
siderable additions. The sequence is as follows: after mutual 
longing. B and C add: For man is still bound by his outward 
station, by the place which, in the meagre thing we call society, 
is assigned to him, but which he can not win for himself, and 
men cling to these restricting ties more tenaciously than a plant 
to mother earth. (Cf. p. 32.) Why so? Because it costs them 
little, they think, to cramp the higher spiritual life in order to 
be more certain of enjoying the lower. This is why they allow 
no free association to prosper, no open, spontaneous life; this 
is why they live so strangely, almost hermit-like, in close little 
cells, next to each other but not with each other; this is why 
they avoid union on a great scale, making but a miserable coun- 
terfeit of it in a federation of small states, and just as the 
fatherland is ridiculously divided, so is each of their little com- 
munities. [Cf. pp. 58-59, a propos the ideal of German unity. ] 

After this in B and C there follows the passage on page 54- 
55. Many a man has sufficient penetration . . . favorable at- 
mosphere. But the last part of this passage is changed as shown 
in the notes on page 110 below. 

After this there follows (p. 54): The piteous fate of the 
negro... barren to them (p. 54). 

Then (p. 55) : Again, many a man has a genuine . . . asso- 
ciation with his fellow-beings; (p. 55). With changes as given 
in the notes on p. 110 

Hoe (p. 54) : The earth’s resources . . . is no one’s business 


Finally (p. 55): And even to expect such aid... its imme- 
diate consequences (p. 56). Cf. Schiele, pp. 53-54. 

12 J_A fortunate man. 

13 But no means . . . inner life. But few are able to find the 
spiritual companions who can cause their inner lives to prosper. 

14 The distant—Their true. 


15 And to find . . . them—Or to absorb the very nature of it 
and enter into its secrets with loving adaptation. 
18 For the world . . . favorable atmosphere—His creative 


powers are spent in unhappy experiments; for no propitious 
winds waft him into a more favorable clime, he can reach no 
helpful friend, whose business it would be to supply him with 
the sustenance he needs, and to lead him to fruitful sources of 
knowledge. 

17 Iy the pain . . . esthetic intent—C: when they criticize 
what is alien to their spirits in his work, and he is obliged to 
experience that his own esthetic purposes are obstructed, be- 


NOTES—PROSPECT 111 


cause they demand something foreign to his genius. 

18 Knowledge—experiences and insights. 

19 The friendship—C: the false friendship. 

20 The beautiful—C: the most beautiful. 

21 Are all—C: almost all become. 

22 New existence—Higher existence. [The terms “new” and 
“old” were appropriate here in view of the rising national senti- 
ment in Germany. Schleiermacher’s strong participation in this 
sentiment is evidenced not only by ensuing passages in the text, 
but also in his letters (see Letters, v. 2, pp. 57-58ff.) and by his 
public career. See Introduction, pp. Iviff. 

23 The state—C: society. [The change in wording here is 
indicative of Schleiermacher’s increasing political liberalism in 
face of the Metternich reaction. See Introduction, pp. lviff. 

24 Tight—C adds: an awful warning to the superstitious 
slaves of the present. 


25 All . . . are drawing, etc—C: May all . . . draw, etc. 

26 [Vorldly motives—C: impure worldly motives. 

27 At its command . . . not—C: more at its command than 
we have. 


28 Concealed defects—C: the true shape and strength of limbs 
though concealed. 


PROSPECT 


1He must want ~ . . above all—He must strive to know, 
albeit in vain since the alternatives as he imagines them are 
inconceivable. 

2 The gods—B and C add: of mythology. 

37 surrendered . . . once taken—Contradict what I then did; 
but how could I wish to reverse that original decision by virtue 
of which I am what I am. 

4 Its entirety—C adds: to the exclusion of all else. 

5 The lifeless—C: those who even in their prime are lifeless. 

6 Respect . . . bans—C: who often endure them as natural 
restrictions more than they respect them. 

7 Do not—No longer. 

8 Confirmations . . . to welcome—C adds: but am entitled to 
enjoy changeless peace. No I shall ever welcome. 

® As the fleeing . . . weapons—As the seaman in a raging 
storm casts overboard the cargo. 

10 Can my will . . . fatherhood—Does not the incomprehens- 
ible often make sport of the dearest and truest love, and pre- 
vent a husband from also enjoying fatherhood? 

11 Has strayed—B and C add: from days of pristine virtue or. 

12 To—C adds: us and to. 


112 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


13 Juages-—C adds: confidently. 

14 When judgment . . . contemplated—C: when the act im- 
agined is a conscious outcome of such habitual reflection, then 
thisiact> 

15 J have not got—C: is not at all as they imagine it. 

16 To hate me—C: to turn from me. 

17 More deeply—B and C add: and genuinely. 

18 Could—Can. 

19 Perfect—Inward. 

20 4 premonition—Like a premonition. 


YOUTH AND AGE 
1 Mad—C: Sad. 


2 Idleness—C: wisdom. 

3 Emptiness of desire—C: peace of heart. 

4 Efforts, C adds: But what they call the repose of wisdom 
is only idleness, and their peace of heart is an empty peace. 

5 Jt 1s man’s—C: Let it be my . . . my goal... ete. 

6 A situation—C: everything. 

7 Fruit—C adds: that is ready to fall. 

8 Mere foliage—C: the unsatisfying outgrowth of a turbulent 
disposition. 

9 Inner energies—C: life’s richer possibilities. 

10 Part of you—C: part of your life. 


APPENDIX 


fbb . 





APPENDIX 
I 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHLEIERMACHER’S 
PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM 


Schleiermacher’s intellectual life until about 1792 
was that of the youthful philosopher, whose im- 
mature intelligence moves amid generalities with 
significant instinct and logical acumen, but without 
critical self-possession. The years that immediately 
followed from 1792 to 1802, were the years that 
brought him his fundamental insights, and that also 
saw the first expression of these in the Speeches on 
Religion (1799) and the Soliloquies (1800). The 
further development, the manifold application, and 
the systematic formulation of what he took these in- 
sights to mean occupied him throughout the remain- 
der of his life. This appendix will trace the develop- 
ment of his ideas in the first and third of these periods 
in some detail, but will pass more briefly over the sec- 
ond, despite its greater importance, because Schleier- 
macher’s own interpretation of this second period 1s 
given in the text of the Soliloquies, and I have already 
given mine in the Introduction (pp. xi-lx above). 


Sec. 1. Earliest Manuscripts (1789-1793). 


Before he commenced to write at all, Schleiermacher 
had been “nursed in the womb of piety” at home and 


116 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


in Moravian schools.t_ He had also separated from 
the Moravian Botherhood when he felt that to con- 
tinue in its limited ways of life and thought would be 
to wear a “false mask.’* He had become devoted to 
classical studies. Finally, he had begun to study the 
philosophers, principally Aristotle, Kant, Leibniz and 
Spinoza at first. The trend of these first philosophic 
studies can be inferred in the main from certain ex- 
tant manuscripts which Wilhelm Dilthey examined, 
and in part published in an appendix to his Life of 
Schleiermacher. The manuscripts date, he believes, 
from the time of Schleiermacher’s initial philosophic 
studies at Halle and shortly thereafter.* 

In these papers Schleiermacher appears to be wrest- 
ling, chiefly with Kantian philosophy, as with a veiled 
destiny, to win his own spiritual integrity. In what 
is presumably the earliest of them all. Uber das 
hochste Gut, he accepts the Kantian definition of the 
summum bonum as morality plus happiness, together 
with Kant’s criticism of hedonistic ethics and concep- 
tion of the moral law as a categorical principle of 
pure practical reason.* Yet these formulations dis- 
turb him. He thinks the moral law should be related 
to the summum bonum as an algebraic equation is 
related to the geometrical curve described in accord- 


10On Religion, p. 9. 

2 See pp. 73-74. 

3 Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 1-145. These pages are the primary 
source, in print, of our knowledge of Schleiermacher’s philoso- 
phy in its beginnings. For some of the early manuscripts, how- 
ever, a fuller text is to be found published elsewhere. (See 
notes 8-11 on p. 118.) 

* See Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 6-19. Dilthey dates this paper 
1789 Schleiermacher’s last year as a student at Halle. 


APPENDIX 1 Gl 


ance with it.> It seems to him unreasonable for a 
moral law to enjoin conduct that surrenders a real part 
of the highest good. Being unable, however, at this 
time to formulate a more satisfying moral principle 
than Kant’s, Schleiermacher contents himself in this 
initial essay with a criticism of the theological postu- 
lates which Kant attaches to his ethics. He objects to 
the idea that morality requires belief in a God able to 
provide the perfect union of morality and happiness. 
A “good will,” the only essential requirement of mor- 
ality, is not only possible, but all the purer if inde- 
pendent of such belief. Moreover, it is questionable 
whether even a God could unite what Kant has put - 
asunder! If man remains a creature of the senses, 
will not deviations from the Kantian law of reason be 
inevitable even in paradise? On the other hand, if he 
be divested of his sensibility in the world beyond, will 
he then be capable of what Kant calls happiness? 
Thus, at the very beginning of his philosophical 
career Schleiermacher rejected the attempt to found 
theism on moral considerations. An entry in his diary 
some years later reads: “Religion must be justified 
on its own account.’*® Ina letter to his friend Brink- 
mann (1789) he speaks of forwarding a manuscript 
of one hundred pages On Religion." Unfortunately, 
this manuscript has been lost, so that we do not know 
how far Schleiermacher’s thought on religion had ad- 


5 Dilithey, Appendix, p. 9. Schleiermacher repeats this idea in 
later writings (see Werke, III, v. 2, pp. 357ff., 446£f.) and it 
became a cardinal tenet of his, in contrast to Kant, that the good 
and not the moral law is the controlling concept in moral philoso- 
phy. The idea may originally have been suggested to him by 
the work he did as a pupil of Eberhard’s, translating portions 
of Aristotle Ethics (see p. xix above). 

8 Dilthey, Appendix, p. 101. 

” Briefe, v. 4, p. 3, and also Dilthey, Appendix, p. 4. 


118 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


vanced, before he joined the Berlin romanticists in 
1796, toward the ideas expressed in his Speeches on 
Religion in 1799. The steps leading up to the Solilo- 
guies of 1800 are easier to trace. 

There is a New Year’s sermon of 1792 and also an 
essay in manuscript called Uber den Wert des Lebens, 
which Dilthey dates 1793, both of which anticipate 
many parts of the Soliloquies in idea and in language.*® 
In the essay Schleiermacher continues his search for 
a more satisfactory ideal of life than that furnished 
in Kant’s philosophy. The dualism between pure prac- 
tical reason and happiness is still troubling him, and 
while he is as yet unable to resolve it, he is more than 
ever convinced that some ideal sense of life (etme 
gewisse Idealempfindung des Lebens) can be found 
which will do justice to both aspects of human desire.® 
“T must seek to know the truth about my life,” he 
says . . . “For I have long been comforted by the 
firm belief that Truth and Happiness are one.” . 
“There shall be no cleft in me between appetite and 
understanding; they shall be one.’’?° What the ideal 
sense of life is, in which these oppositions are over- 
come, Schleiermacher cannot say, but he suggests 
that a consideration of man’s distinctive powers of 
thinking, feeling, and willing and of their harmonious 
development may be the path of moral discovery. 
In any case, the human ideal is to be found in man 


8 See pp. xxxix-xli above for further comment on this fact. 
Comparison of the three is facilitated by using Schiele’s edition 
of the Monologen, which contains both the sermon and the 
earlier essay in an Appendix, pp. 147-198. 

9 Dilthey, Appendix, p. 50, or Schiele, p. 175. 

10 Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 48, 53, or Schiele, pp. 171, 179. 

11 Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 51-52ff., or Schiele, pp. 177£{£. This 
idea too (cf. above p. 117 and note) suggests Aristotelean 
influence. 


APPENDIX 119 


and not in some outside principle or power. This point 
is fixed and remains fixed for Schleiermacher.*” 

Another partially extant manuscript, dating from 
the same period 1789-1792, Uber die Freitheit, criti- 
cizes the Kantian postulate of freedom. Schleier- 
macher begins by putting this question: “How must 
the activity of the faculty of desire be constituted if 
it is to be compatible with the recognition of moral 
responsibility ?’’!* His answer is threefold: (1) there 
must be a “moral impulse” of some sort, (2) this 
moral impulse must have an equal chance with every 
other impulse to become the determining factor in 
action, and (3) the cause which makes this impulse 
determining in a particular action must lie within the 
self, not outside of it. That is, in cases of moral re- 
sponsibility, this cause must lie “within the totality of 
present impressions,” or within the state of soul which 
can be brought about by the course of these impres- 
sions.** Examining these three conditions, Schleier- 
macher concludes that moral responsibility is compat- 
ible with determination by immanent motives, and 
thinks it unnecessary to postulate a “transcendental 
freedom” for the sake of morality. 

About this time Schleiermacher, like many other 
German intellectuals, became interested in Spinoza, 
the reputed philosophical villain of preceding years. 
Because he found much to approve in Spinoza’s phil- 


12 Cf. above p. 20 and note on the same page. See also 
Schiele, pp. 177ff. 

13 Dilthey, Appendix, p. 24. 

14 Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 26-27. 

15 Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 28-46. An essay by W. Loew, Das 
Grundproblem der Ethik Schleiermacher’s in seiner Beziehung 
zu Kant’s Ethik discusses the issue between Schleiermacher and 
Kant on this point very thoroughly. 


120 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


osophy, because of his strictures on Kant’s theory of 
freedom, because of his monistic inclinations gener- 
ally, and his emphasis, in contrast to Fichte, on man’s 
sense of “absolute dependence,” it has been customary 
to call Schleiermacher a determinist.1** And yet his 
Soliloquies (Monologen) are from beginning to end a 
glorification of the freedom which he claims to have 
found. The truth, of course, is that Schleiermacher’s 
philosophy can be identified neither with the position 
of Kant, nor of Spinoza; it is a composite structure 
of its own, embracing many diverse elements. Like 
Hegel, Schleiermacher believed that “whoever would 
master philosophy must understand its history,’™? and 
through historical study he became sensitive to many 
different considerations and provided himself with 
very varied intellectual resources. What he borrowed 
from Kant and Spinoza he modified and wove finely 
together with other ideas into a new pattern. 
Schleiermacher’s first Spinoza studies apparently 
date from about 1792. Cradled, as he had been, in 
pietist devotion, but now uncertain in his conceptions 
of God and man, he was deeply impressed by Spinoza’s 
idea of substance, and by the justice which it did to 
one side of religious consciousness, namely our sense 
of dependence on the infinite whole of things. Spino- 
za’s conception of universal order also satisfied his 
sense of scientific system. But there seemed to be a 
misanthropical element in Spinozism, belittling human 


16 See, for example, Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy. 
a regard to the sense of “absolute dependence,” cf. pp. 154- 


17 Werke, III, v. 4, p. 15. Schleiermacher’s chief studies in 
the history of philosophy are to be found in Werke, III, vols. 
1, 2, 3, and 4’, those in the history of Christianity in Werke I, 
vols. 2, 6, 7, 8, 11. See also Letters, v. 1, p. 14. 


APPENDIX 121 


passion, will, and personality. To be an individual, 
of any species whatsoever, means in the Spinozistic 
metaphysics to be limited; a human being is a small 
fragment of nature, transcending pettiness only 
through intellectual comprehension of universal order. 
Kantian philosophy, on the other hand, while granting 
that human nature is radically limited, nevertheless 
recognizes an absolute dignity in man’s moral will. It 
respects not only the natural order which intelligence 
strives to comprehend, but still more the moral order 
which will strives to create. Moreover, if Spinozism 
with its consistent intellectualism more fully honors 
the rational form of truth, Kantianism in its critical, 
agnostic aspect shows greater regard for the empirical 
element in science. Schleiermacher’s thought moved 
in both philosophies. 

As early as 1793 he seems to have entertained the 
possibility of combining their strong points; at least, 
so it would appear from his commentary on Spinoza, 
Kurze Darstellung des Spimozistischen Systems, to 
which Dilthey assigns that date.1® This essay, like 
Herder’s Gott (1787) and Jakobi’s more famous 
Briefe tiber die Lehre des Spinoza (1785), shows how 
the attempt to determine what the hitherto maligned 
and neglected Spinoza really stood for, combined with 
other intellectual forces present in Germany at the end 
of the eighteenth century to produce a new philosophic 
tradition. Schleiermacher notes that Kant and Spinoza 
both distinguish between existence per se and exis- 


18 Dilthey, Appendix, p. 64ff., and also Dilthey, pp. 147-152. 
For a full text of the essay see Werke, III, v. 4', pp. 283-311. 
The essay also compares Spinoza’s philosophy with that of 
Leibniz, but it is significant that the real issues are felt to be 
those between Spinoza and Kant. Cf. p. xxxii above. 


122 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


tence per aliud. According to Spinoza only one in- 
finite being can exist per se, for finite being is limited, 
and the limit must be per aliud. Kant approaches and 
handles the distinction somewhat differently. He de- 
clines to characterize being an sich in any way, since 
all existence that we can know is, by the very fact of 
its being known, finite and per aliud. Schleiermacher 
tries to show that these two positions, Kant’s and 
Spinoza’s, are not as far apart as they appear. Kant, 
while agnostic with respect to existence per se, moves 
in Spinoza’s direction, Schleiermacher thinks, when, in 
treating the antinomies of reason, he identifes noume- 
nal being with the Unconditioned. To be sure, this 
Kantian Unconditioned can not be called one or “posi- 
tively infinite” without dogmatism. Being as such is 
pure existence in reference to which both Leibnitzean 
pluralism and Spinozistic monism must be tran- 
scended. Herein Schleiermacher agrees with Kant. 
He believes, however, that Spinoza himself approaches 
this critical, agnostic position, when he affirms that 
substance has an infinite number of attributes, only 
two of which are revealed to our intellect. With re- 
spect to existence per aliud, Schleiermacher thinks it 
possible to unite Spinoza’s account with Kant’s in some 
such terms as these: “The finite beings which man 
knows are an appearance that the modes of substance’s 
attributes produce through the infinitely diverse com- 
binations of their parts.’’?® It would seem from this 
proposition that Schleiermacher is trying to say: Yes, 
Kant is right in holding our experience to be a very 
finite, particularly conditioned, phenomenal affair, but 
at the same time it is possible to believe that this expe- 


19 Werke, III, v. 41, p. 301. 


APPENDIX 123 


rience is part of an imposing system of absolute order 
and being, such as Spinoza describes. 

Besides the essay just considered, there is an un- 
published manuscript of Schleiermacher’s entitled 
Spinozismus, in which the important question is raised 
as to the ultimate ground of individuality, the prin- 
cipium individuit. Schleiermacher endeavors to dis- 
tinguish between substantiality and individuality, and 
denies that Leibniz’s metaphysics of plural substances 
(monads) explains individuality any better than 
Spinoza’s monistic view of substance. At the same 
time he confesses that in this “crucial problem (Kern- 
punkt) of philosophic theory,” he himself does not 
know “where to cast anchor.’’”° 


Sec. 2. Years of Insight (1792-1802). 


To recapitulate the foregoing: Schleiermacher in his 
earliest writings traces out for himself certain abstract 
relationships. The “moral law” is a formula for at- 
taining the “highest good” (Uber das héchste Gut 
1789). The “highest good” is the harmonious devel- 
opment of man’s various faculties (Uber den Wert des 
Lebens, 1793). Moral responsibility does not necessi- 
tate transcendental freedom (Uber die Freiheit 1792). 
Existence per se is infinite being, and hence unknow- 
able, but phenomena exist in and through it (Kurze 
Darstellung des Spinozistischen Systems 1793). Sub- 
stantiality does not explain individuality (Spinozismus 
1793-’94). 

The way a youthful mind will pursue a suggestion 
of reason in tenuous abstractions like these is uncanny. 
Still more inscrutable, however, is the way in which 


20 See Dilthey, p. 151, and Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 68-69. 


124 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


such an abstract scheme, when it has once engaged 
the mind, serves both to promote and to obstruct, to 
clarify and to obscure whatever fresh and original ex- 
perience the world has in store for the individual. In 
Schleiermacher’s case the experience and ideas, which 
in his maturity he recognized as his most original and 
highest insights, were not clearly implicated in the 
web of his earliest speculations, but came to him inde- 
pendently as the spiritual deposit of a richer life in the 
years 1792 to 1802. “The sublime revelation came 
from within; it was not produced by any code of ethics 
or system of philosophy.’ Yet who can define what 
latent effect the early speculations had in eliciting from 
this richer life its cardinal revelations? Certainly 
the new web of ideas, which Schleiermacher wove in 
the light of these revelations, also has in it a pattern 
based on his earlier ideas. 

More specifically, Schleiermacher’s philosophical 
development appears to have taken about the follow- 
ing course. Both at Schlobitten, where he lived in the 
home of the Dohna family, and at Berlin in the roman- 
tic circle, he saw attractive forms of human life con- 
cretely realized. He “saw clearly that each man is 
meant to represent humanity in his own way, combin- 
ing its elements uniquely.”?? In previous years he 
had abstractly defined the “highest good” as the har- 
monious development of human faculties. Now, with- 
out changing the definition, he began to identify this 
“good” with concrete forms of development such as 
he saw. “Freedom,” defined previously as determina- 
tion by a moral impulse, he now began to identify, 


21 See above p. 29. 
22 See above p. 31. Also pp. xxxviiff. 


APPENDIX 125 


quite consistently, with the imprint of human charac- 
ter upon nature, and in a heightened sense with the 
imprint of individualized human character.** To divine 
individual character, and to live so as to enhance it, 
seemed to him more and more the essence of morality. 
In self-knowledge and in knowledge of other selves 
was to be found that ideal sense of life, which pre- 
served the image of good entire, instead of opening, 
like Kantian ethics, an everlasting breach between the 
disparate goods of sense and reason. 

This increased regard for individual character as a 
pivotal fact in the moral order brought Schleiermacher 
back to the question raised in his study of Spinoza: 
what is the status of individuality in the universal 
order? In that hybrid of Spinozistic-Kantian meta- 
physics, which he had conceived in 1793, individuality 
was held to be different from substantiality, but no 
conclusion was reached as to its nature and ground.** 
Nor was Schleiermacher to reach a definite conclu- 
sion in this matter for many years. It is not difficult 
to understand why, when one considers the many as- 
pects of the problem as he saw it. For him, almost all 
philosophic issues began to center on this Kernpunkt. 
In the first place, Spinoza and Kant, indeed virtually 
the whole philosophic tradition, taught him to identifv 
reason with the universal, but he himself was coming 
more and more to identify a large part of moral rea- 
son, at least, with respect for individuality. At the 
same time, while it was largely moral experience tha‘ 
interested him in individuality, he was unwilling to 
make moral qualities the criterion of all individuality. 


23 See above pp. 28-33. 
24 See above p. 123. 


126 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


Furthermore, he had not in the least lost his religious 
feeling for the infinite ““whole that stands over against 
man,”2> so that he did not think of all value as associ- 
ated with the individual and the unique. Again, he 
was still a Kantian, in his agnosticism with respect to 
absolute substance, in his view that knowledge reveals 
only a manifold of interrelated phenomena. And, 
finally, he was just beginning to realize that his earlier 
attempt to combine Spinozistic and Kantian ideas had 
been made half-blindly, without critically facing the 
question of what after all should determine the struc- 
ture of a philosophic system. His was not a mind to 
cut these Gordian knots by some single blow. It took 
him many years to collect the group of concepts by 
which he finally tried to express his view of the place 
of individuality in the universal order.”® 

Meanwhile, however, he was riding on the magic 
carpet of his own immediate experiences, “in that beau- 
tiful time of my life (1792-1800), when I came into 
contact with so much that was new.’?* The golden 
tree of life abundantly provided fruitful insights with- 
out demanding that they fall at once into a complete 
theoretic system. Moreover, Schleiermacher was jus- 
tified in believing that these new insights of his into 
individual moral and religious consciousness were not 
without their significance for philosophic theory. How- 
ever, he might finally describe the relations between 
individual and universe when he had attained philo- 
sophic clarity, whether in terms that could somehow 
be assimilated to the older speculative traditions or 
not, he knew that in any case his own more recent in- 


25 On Religion, p. 37. 
26 See below p. 137-141. 
27 See above p. 41. Parenthesis and dates mine. 


APPENDIX 127 


sights were not adequately expressed in the ideas of 
Spinoza, or of Kant, or indeed of any philosopher 
with whom he was acquainted. 

This was the point in his philosophical development 
that Schleiermacher had reached when, under the en- 
couragement of Schlegel and other friends, he wrote 
the Speeches on Religion (1799), a work which ex- 
pressly precludes all attempts to define the universe 
and the individual, or to penetrate to the roots of their 
relationship, but which dwells at length upon religion, 
defined as a sense which the individual has for the uni- 
verse. The notable characteristic of religious con- 
sciousness, thinks Schleiermacher, is the way in which 
“love” for the universe and “love” for the individual 
are fused in it. In scientific consciousness the indi- 
vidual attains a universal viewpoint, but effaces his 
particularity. In moral consciousness some interest 
of human will, be it individual or collective, is favored 
above other being. But religion exhibits the individual, 
steeping the universe in his own uniqueness, concerned 
to find his own particular being in communion with 
the all.** This power of individual mind to universal- 
ize even its individuality finds no recognition in the 
metaphysics of Spinoza or of Kant, for whom uni- 
versality and individuality remain antithetic. In their 
view the individual transcends his individuality when 
he rises either to an intellectual comprehension of the 


28 Cf. pp. xlIviii-l. Unfortunately we are not able to trace 
the steps by which Schleiermacher reached these views of relig- 
ious consciousness as well as we can trace the development of 
other ideas in his philosophy. An emphasis on the emotional, 
in contrast to the dogmatic, side of religion must have been 
present from the start in his pietistic upbringing, but whether 
he made this central and how he interpreted it in the period 
before 1796 we do not know. See pp. xviii, 117-118. 


128 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


one universal order, or to devotion to the essential 
moral law. But Schleiermacher would emphasize a 
type of experience in which there is productive, inner 
continuity between the individual and the universal.” 

Like the Speeches on Religion, the Soliloquies, pub- 
lished a few months later, aim to describe Schleier- 
macher’s new experiences and insights, in this case 
particularly his insights into moral consciousness, with- 
out, however, striving for close definition, or for a 
dialectical treatment of concepts, in short, without de- 
termining precisely what these experiences might yield 
for a comprehensive system of philosophic thought. 
The lavish use of the term Geist (spirit) in the Solilo- 
quies is itself indicative of this fact, a term rich in 
moral and religious connotations through popular 
usage, but of unstable scientific value until Schelling, 
Hegel, and Schleiermacher made an attempt to stab- 
ilize its meaning some years later (c. 1810). For the 
most part, the Soliloquies depict things as refracted in 
a certain kind of moral and esthetic consciousness ; the 
author reviews his development from the standpoint 
of the ideal he has reached. Thus, for example, he 
retrospects upon his point of view before he had dis- 
covered the significance of individuality, and empha- 
sizes chiefly the moral implications of that former 
position. “For a long time I too was content with the 
discovery of a universal reason; I worshipped the one 
essential being as the highest, and so believed that 
there is but a single right way of acting in every situ- 

29 On Religion, pp. 43, 58, 228. The foreshadowing of the 
Hegelian metaphysics of being in this description of religious 
consciousness is unmistakeable. Schleiermacher’s later thought in 


fact moved in the direction of such a metaphysics, with impor- 
tant qualifications, as we shall see below, pp. 137-141. 


APPENDIX 129 


ation, that the conduct of all men should be alike, each 
differing from the other only by reason of his place 
and station in the world. I thought humanity revealed 
itself as varied only in the manifold diversity of out- 
ward acts, that man himself, the individual, was not . 
a being uniquely fashioned, but of one substance and 
everywhere the same.”°° The criticism in this passage 
is moral, and need not imply a precise metaphysics. 

But there are certain passages in the Soliloquies, as 
written in 1800, which sound as if Schleiermacher, 
under the inspiration of his new insights, were aban- 
doning the “critical’’ position, to swing himself with 
great élan into a dogmatic idealistic metaphysics of a 
sort that affirms the universe to be fundamentally an 
infinite community of spiritual individuals. Of course, 
his enthusiasm in the Soliloquies for this point of view 
should be regarded as thoroughly genuine, but never- 
theless as enthusiasm for a point of view in the at- 
mosphere of which he was living, and not as the expo- 
sition of his philosophical system. Schleiermacher had 
not developed a system of philosophy when he wrote 
the Soliloquies, and when he did so in later years, it 
was not in accord with these extremely “idealistic” 
passages. He himself recognized this so completely 
that he changed many of the passages in question as 
early as 1810, when a second edition of the text was 
published.* In the light of these changes, it seems 


30 See p. 30 above. The period of life referred to in this 
passage is that before 1793 or thereabouts. See p. xxxiiiff. 


31 Cf. passages of the text on pp. 16-17, with the subsequent 
modifications as given in the notes on pp. 104-105. Cf. also 
below pp. 134-142 for the later system. I now turn to describe 
that system without commenting further on the viewpoint of the 
Peace or the Soliloquies as this has been done in the Intro- 

uction. 


130 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


as if Schleiermacher in 1800 had to a certain extent 
clothed his thought in a current metaphysical idiom, 
which he soon realized was an unnecessarily and un- 
justifiably extravagant way of putting the essential 
facts he had discovered about individuality and moral 
consciousness. 


Sec. 3. The System-Making of Later Years (1802- 
1834). 


There are thirty-one volumes in the complete edition 
of Schleiermacher’s works,** but only four of these 
were written with an immediate view to publication. 
Ten of them are collections of his sermons, two of 
public and professional addresses, while thirteen were 
posthumously pieced together out of lecture notes. 
Two more, though prepared for the press by Schleier- 
macher himself (Der christliche Glaube, 1821-22), 
contain material that was first used in lectures. Thus, 
by far the larger portion of his work was produced 
under a predominantly didactic, rather than a literary 
impulse. Schleiermacher says that he realized his es- 
sentially didactic bent early in life, but that he never 
discovered any talent for writing. A year after leav- 
ing the university he wrote to a friend: “I have fully 
given up the thought of writing, because I am certain 
that I should never be able to accomplish anything in 
that line.”** He rarely, if ever wrote out his sermons 
before delivering them. It was the influence of Fried- 
rich Schlegel and other literary friends, with whom 


32 Published by G. Reimer, Berlin, 1835-’64. In addition to 
these thirty-one, there are five volumes of letters also published 
by Reimer, and five volumes of Plato’s dialogues translated by 
Schleiermacher into German, Berlin, 1804-1810. 


33 Briefe, v. 4, p. 42. 


APPENDIX 131 


he kept company in Berlin, that led him for a time into 
literary channels,** but even as an author he chose to 
imagine himself in the situation of a speaker, or, in 
one case, of a correspondent: he wrote “Speeches on 
Religion,” “Soliloquies,” a dialogue called “Christmas 
Eve” (Weihnachtsfeier), and the “Confidential Let- 
ters’ about Schlegel’s Lucinde. 

Schleiermacher’s literary élan spent itself in these 
four works, all of them written between 1798 and 1806, 
the years when he was closest to the “romantic circle.” 
What he did before and after this period has a severely 
academic cast, scholarly researches of an exegetical 
or historical kind, logical analyses of technical philo- 
sophical concepts, and attempts at the systematic pres- 
entation of various subject-matters, e. g., “dialectic,” 
ethics, psychology, pedagogy, politics, esthetics, dog- 
matics, Christian history, history of philosophy, and 
hermeneutics. Only in his preaching did Schleier- 
macher throughout life keep in contact with a general 
audience. His academic career began in 1804 when he 
was appointed professor and chaplain at his own uni- 
versity of Halle, was interrupted by the Napoleonic 
wars in 1806, and recontinued at the new university 
of Berlin in 1810, where he remained throughout the 
rest of his life. 


But even before his appointment at Halle, namely 
in 1802 when the Berlin romantic group was scattered 
and Schleiermacher went into a kind of exile at Stolpe, 
his scholarly interests came to the fore.*® Cut off from 
his literary friends, he devoted himself, not to the 
project, hinted at in the Soliloquies, of expressing his 


34 See above p. xxxix. 
35 See above p. liv. 


132 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


outlook on life in a novel,** but to the completion of the 
translation of Plato’s dialogues, which he had begun 
with Schlegel. And he took up again his original plan, 
for which the Soliloquies had been substituted in 1800, 
of writing a formal critique of Kantian-Fichtean eth- 
ics.°7_ As he worked on it at Stolpe in the years 1802- 
03, simultaneously with the translation of Plato and 
other historical studies, the project grew into some- 
thing more comprehensive, Outlines of a Critique of 
Previous Ethical Theory.*® 

This Critique is polemic and critical in nature from 
beginning to end, Schleiermacher’s own ethical ideal 
appearing only indirectly.*® And for the most part the 
criticism is formal, that is, it proceeds from the propo- 
sition that ethical teaching should form a thoroughly 
integrated system. Scientific precision and verifica- 
tion are associated with systematic formulation. Now, 
to say that ethics must be a system means, for Schleier- 
macher, that each item of ethical teaching, each duty, 
each virtue, and each good must be defined in the light 
of all the others, so as not to conflict with them or. 
render them ambiguous, but rather so as to supple- 
ment them by clarifying and developing the same idea 
(perhaps Idea) which they express. What ethics seeks 
to portray should “be regarded as a complete whole, 
the parts of which can be understood only in and 
through the whole.’’*° 


38 See above p. xl, 88. 

87 See above p. xl. 

88 Published in Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 1-344, and separately in 
the Philosophische Bibliothek, Leipzig, 1908. 

89 See Werke, III, v. 1, p. 3ff. 

40 Werke, Ill, v. 1, p. 246. Cf. pp. xix-xxi above with respect 
to this idea of “system” in Schleiermacher’s thought. It also 
appears at times in the “unsystematically” written Soliloquies 
(see, for instance, pp. 71-72). 


APPENDIX 133 


Schleiermacher finds, however, that historically the 
philosophers have not developed their ethical teach- 
ings in this thoroughly systematic fashion, and he 
shows that in consequence the counsels of every known 
ethical theory are ambiguous. The specific causes of 
ambiguity are many, for the various philosophers are 
unsystematic in different respects. For example, there 
are some who describe the good as consisting of mul- 
tiple elements without organizing these elements in 
any hierarchy, or without stating any principle by 
which a decision can be made between them.*t Then 
there are others who begin with some single organiz- 
ing principle, but who later find it does not accom- 
plish all that they desire. In this predicament a sec- 
ond supplementary principle is frequently introduced, 
but without explanation of its relations to the first 
principle.‘ This again gives rise to heteronomy. A 
very common source of ambiguity lies in the fact that 
the three aspects of ethical reality, 1. e., virtue, duty 
and good, are treated separately according to unre- 
lated principles. The virtues recommended would 
often not lead to the fulfillment of the duties enjoined, 
nor the latter to the realization of the goods desired.** 
It is a leading principle of Schleiermacher’s in this 
regard that virtues, duties, and goods are related as 
efficient, formal, and final causes of the same ethical 
process.** 

Schleiermacher believes that, all things considered, 
Plato and Spinoza among the classic philosophers have 
avoided these various pitfalls best. Plato’s ethics espe- 


41 Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 78-92, 141. 

42 Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 104-106, 155ff., 208ff. 

438 Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 155ff., 126, 190, 196, 215-217, 174-175. 
44 Cf. pp. xxxi-xxxii, 116-117, 147. 


134 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


cially comes near to being a perfect system, organizing 
all its parts with reference to the aim of contemplating 
“the idea of the good.” ** Perhaps Schleiermacher 
misinterprets Aristotle, whose leading principle he re- 
gards as hedonistic with qualifications that result in 
ambiguities.“* If the idea of the “prudent man” as 
determining the good were taken as central, perhaps 
Aristotle would fare better as a systematic moralist. 

Granting Schleiermacher’s premise, that ethics must 
be systematic in his sense, the strictures he passes upon 
other moral philosophers seem just, though hard. This 
is no doubt a case where it is comparatively easy to 
criticize, and the vital question is whether Schleier- 
macher himself fares better in his own constructive 
efforts. After receiving his appointment at Halle, he 
lectured on ethics repeatedly, both there and at Berlin 
in later years. Moreover, he put some of his leading 
ideas into a series of addresses on moral philosophy 
delivered before the Royal Academy of Sciences in 
the years 1825 to 1830. But he never completed the 
exposition of his ethical system, so that we can judge 
of it only by piecing together the contents of various 
essays and note-books.*? 

In order to understand Schleiermacher’s ethical sys- 
tem, we must likewise piece together a similar set of 
essays and lecture-notes on “dialectic,” in which he 
gradually developed his conception of philosophizing 


45 Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 33-36, 106, 110-111, 176. 

46 Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 113, 177-180, 225. 

47’ This is what Alex. Schweizer did in editing Werke, ITI, 
v. 5. See his Preface. My references to Schleiermacher’s 
Ethtk or Sittenlehre in the sequel refer to this volume. But 
comparison should be made with Otto Braun’s Schleiermacher’s 
Entwurf su einem System der Sittenlehre, a later editinz of the 
manuscripts dating from 1804-1816. See Braun’s Preface, p. xvi. 


APPENDIX 135 


and of philosophic system-making in general.** Accord- 
ing to him, “dialectic” or philosophizing is the art of 
resolving conflicts in thought, of producing streitfreies 
Denken. Philosophy begins in such conflicts and aims 
to resolve them. Now, by analyzing the nature of 
these conflicts, we arrive at two fundamental proposi- 
tions: (1) thought refers beyond itself to being, and 
(2) thought involves antitheses. The analysis which 
leads to the first proposition is briefly as follows: con- 
flict between thinking A is b and thinking A is not b 
is possible only if the thinking in each case refers 
beyond itself to the same A. Such “conflict implies 
that an identical object is being considered, and thereby 
implies a general reference of thought to Being.’’* 
Schleiermacher is aware that this “reference of 
thought to being,’ while apparently implied in the 
process of thinking, has also been construed as a radi- 
cal obstacle to the success of thinking. For if thought 
refers to a transcendent object, how can it be tested? 
His answer is: it cannot be tested by the comparison 
of idea and object, except in cases of self-knowledge, 
where alone we are directly in touch with the object 


48 Cf. above p. xx, 126. Schleiermacher lectured on “dialectic” 
in 1811, 1814, 1818, 1822, 1828, and 1831. L. Jonas edited the 
available materials in Werke, III, v. 4, and a new critical edi- 
tion was made by J. Halpern, Berlin, 1903. In my account of 
Schleiermacher’s system I have run the lectures on “dialectic” 
and on “ethics” together as forming a whole. 


49 Werke, III, v. 47, p. 584ff. In the above section, and 
throughout the Dialektik, Schleiermacher is treating primarily 
of logical thought and of Wissen. But the most general char- 
acteristics of such thought seem to him to hold also of practical 
and esthetic thinking, and hence I have used the generic term. 
Cf. p. 142 and note. 


136 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


of thought.°® But thought can be tested in a measure 
by its relation to other thought. If all ideas having 
a common reference agree with each other, and are 
consistent with ideas having other references, then at 
least we should have no reason to suppose a discrep- 
ancy between our thought and the object to which it 
referred, even though we should not be able to per- 
ceive or to prove an agreement.*! 

Schleiermacher holds that such agreement among 
ideas can never be perfect, because of the individualiz- 
ing tendency that pervades all being.®* Hence there is 
no perfectly streitfreies Denken, no impeccable scien- 
tific knowledge. On the other hand, he finds sufficient 
intellectual agreement resulting here and there from 
certain types of inquiry to convince him that there is 
significant correspondence between the structure of 
being and the structure of logical thought. He believes 
that in the concepts and propositions of science, reality 
effects a partial organization of ideas corresponding to 
a similar, partial organization of powers and their man- 
ifestations, which it effects among objects.** 


50 iVerke, III, v. 4, p. 53. This theory, that in self-con- 
sciousness thought and its object are in immediate rapport, 
Schleiermacher shares with many of his contemporaries, not- 
ably Fichte and Schopenhauer. Unlike these two idealists, how- 
ever, he does not base an idealistic metaphysics on this theory, 
i. e., he does not infer that in self-consciousness we discover 
what it means to be. See pp. 139-140 below and note. 

51 Schleiermacher apparently does not consider the difficulties 
which may be involved in the comparison of ideas themselves, 
difficulties which George Santayana has driven home so effec- 
tively in his Scepticism and Animal Faith. 

52 Cf. pp. 137-141 and Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 1166120. Even in 
scientific knowledge, where individualized spirituality yields for 
the most part to a universal reason, individuality still manifests 
itself. Schleiermacher gives some interesting examples derived 
from a comparison of the scientific Aa tcne and traditions 
of the different nations. See Werke, III, v. 4, p. 577ff. 

53 Werke, III, v. 4, pp. 111-146. 


APPENDIX 137 


To understand more fully how Schleiermacher con- 
ceives thought and being, it is necessary to trace the 
development of that second fundamental proposition, 
which he discovered in his analysis of logical conflicts: 
thought involves antitheses.°* It is the nature and 
implications of these antitheses which must be exam- 
ined. The life of thought is everywhere full of dis- 
tinctions, and seems to be characterized by a double 
movement, at once toward relating and uniting what 
is distinct and toward differentiating what is one. The 
scientist, for example, looks for unity and diversity in 
the same subject-matter, seeking to discover more and 
more minute distinctions, but also interpreting them 
through more and more general facts in which the dis- 
tinctions seem to be grounded. This double movement 
gives rise, on the one hand, to the idea of God, as a 
highest unity embracing all distinctions, and on the 
other, to the idea of the world, as all distinctions 
embraced in this unity. God and the world are not 
to be identified, but ‘neither can we think of one 
without the other’; they are correlatives. Both are 
transcendent; the world transcends all actual thought 
as a terminus ad quem toward which the process of 
discovery approaches; God transcends thought abso- 
lutely as a terminus a quo, in which thinking is 
grounded, but which it cannot approach.*®* At the 
same time, God and the world are in a sense immanent, 
i. e., they are represented in human experience, in a 
sense which is to be explained later. (See below, p. 
140ff. ) 


To say that thought involves antitheses, however, is 


54 See p. 135 above. 
55 Werke, III, v. 4, pp. 154-172. 


138 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


to say more than that it involves distinctions. An 
antithesis is a special kind of distinction, in which one 
member somehow involves its opposite, e. g., hot and 
cold, wet and dry, hard and soft, etc. To say that 
thought involves such distinctions is to indicate a cer- 
tain relativism in experience, and a need for qualified 
statement.°® Experience exhibits a mixture of oppo- 
sites. Now, hot and cold, hard and soft, etc., are an- 
titheses which appear in some experiences, but not in 
others; they are not universal. Schleiermacher, how- 
ever, describes a group of antitheses which he believes 
are universal, involved in the very nature of thought 
and its objects. Each antithesis in this group appears 
in various forms, so that more than one pair of terms 
exists to characterize it. Thus, one of these universal 
antitheses is that between the organic and the intellec- 
tual, between what Kant called “matter” and “form,” 
between a sense-manifold spacially and temporally 
organized, on the one hand, and a system of meanings, 
on the other. A second is that between the universal 
and the particular, the general and the individual, the 
common and the unique. Embracing these two antithe- 
ses within itself, there is what Schleiermacher calls the 
“highest antithesis,’ namely that between “thing” and 
“spirit,’ the known and the knowing, the real and the 
ideal, nature and reason. This highest antithesis em- 
braces the other two inasmuch as whatever is predomi- 
nantly natural, real, and “thinglike” is predominantly 
organic, material, spacial and temporal, made up of 
particulars or individuals, and abounding in unique- 
ness, whereas whatever is predominantly reasonable, 
ideal, and spiritual is predominantly intellectual, for- 


56 Werke, III, v. 5, p. 15. 


ArPENDIX 139 


mal, meaningful, of a general, common, and universal 
character.*” 

The italicizing of the word predominantly in the 
foregoing statement points to a significant character- 
istic of the antitheses in thought, which must be exam- 
ined next. An antithesis in which there was a perfect 
equilibrium of forces, 1. e., in which each member can- 
celled the effect of the other by working in an opposite 
direction to an equal degree, such an antithesis would 
frustrate thought. That which is equally organic and 
intellectual, universal and particular (active and pas- 
sive), in the same respect, cannot be thought any 
more than can the purely intellectual and universal, or 
the purely organic and particular. Every thought and 
every object of thought must be both intellectual and 
organic, universal and particular, and it must be pre- 
dominantly one in some respects and predominantly 
the other in other respects.°® Hence that which is 
natural and real is not only predominantly natural and 
real, but in some respects predominantly reasonable 
and ideal, and likewise what is real and ideal is never- 
theless in some respects predominantly natural and 
real. 

Points of similarity between this aspect of Schleier- 


57 Werke, III, v. 5, p. 25, and v. 4%, pp. 76ff. “Der hdchste 
Gegensaz, unter dem uns alle andern begriffen vorschweben, ist 
der des dinglichen und des geistigen Seins.” For the other two 
universal antitheses, embraced in this highest one, see respec- 
tively Werke, III, v. 4°, pp. 55ff., 111ff., and v. 5 pp. 103-116, 
116-120. Another general antithesis closely related to these in 
Schleiermacher’s thought is that between the active and the pas- 
sive, will and compulsion, the ethical and the physical. See 
Werke, III, v. 42, pp. 147-150, and cf. below pp. 141 ff. 

58 Werke, III, v. 5, p. 21. “Jeder Gegensaz, also, in wiefern 
er in einem bestimmten Sein und Wissen gegeben ist, muss 
gegeben sein in der Zwiefaltigkeit des Uebergewichts hier 
seines einen, dort seines andern Gliedes.” 


140 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


macher’s “dialectic” and Hegelian dialectic are not far 
to seek. Unlike Hegel, however, Schleiermacher did 
not affirm his dialectic of thought to be identical with 
the metaphysics of being. He found sufficient evidence 
to “incline” him toward the view that there is signifi- 
cant correspondence between the two, but he did not 
believe the correspondence to be complete, and he 
allowed the possibility of other inclinations being 
equally justified.®® In brief, Schleiermacher remained 
from beginning to end a Kantian in his belief that we 
know only in part. Hence, according to him, every 
attempt to state what are the most general and funda- 
mental truths involves, not only analysis, but also in- 
clination, i. e., Gesinnung.®° His own inclination, as he 
himself interprets it, is to look for the most general 
and fundamental truths “in our own being,” since that 
is the most complicated being of which we know. As 
far as we know, more different kinds of activity are 
organized in us, more antitheses are brought together 
in man than anywhere else. Among others, “the high- 
est antithesis will also be found in our being (for our 
being . . . is determined by all antitheses), and since 
it is more immediately present to us than any other 
being, we should look for this antithesis here.” This is 
as near as Schleiermacher comes to metaphysical ideal- 
ism.®* The way in which man endeavors progressively 
to harmonize the contrasts in his experience gives us 
the best suggestion we have of God and the world. 
Man strives to see more of the universal in the particu- 
lar, and more of the particular in the universal. He 


59 Cf. pp. xx, 135-136. 

60 Werke, III, v. 47, p. 76. 

$1 Werke, III, v. 5, p. 25. There is a very characteristic blend 
of scholastic and of subjective idealism in this reasoning. 


APPENDIX 141 


strives to make the ideal more and more real, and the 
real more and more ideal. He strives to have every- 
thing in time and space full of meaning, and to give 
everything meaningful a local habitation and a name. 
Coupled with this human striving is a belief in its con- 
nection with reality, a conviction that the ground or 
basis for ideal experience already exists, that man is 
not seeking a mirage, but the actual, a reality as yet 
known only in part. He believes that if he knew 
fully, he should know God, a being in whom the real 
is ideal, whose only compulsion is his own action, but 
whose action is necessary, for whom no material is 
meaningless and no thought empty, who is at once the 
only being absolutely universal and absolutely indi- 
vidual. 

This idea of God, which in cognitive experience is 
purely formal, is enriched in religious experience by 
our “feeling for the universe’ and the consequent 
treatment which imagination gives to it. Moral expe- 
rience likewise requires this idea of God, not as an 
image of the moral ideal, but as implying that tie be- 
tween the intellectual and the volitional which is essen- 
tial to morality.*? Schleiermacher’s lectures on Dialek- 
tik deal primarily with cognitive experience, but 
towards the end of Part I (as arranged by Jonas) 
these and other points are made regarding religious 
and moral experience to show that these latter realms 
of experience exhibit the same fundamental features 
and antitheses which thought discovers in its cognitive 
employment. Schleiermacher’s conception, in this mat- 


82 Werke, III, v. 42, pp. 147-154. Cf. Soliloquies, p. 28. 
This is an interesting modification of Kant’s theory that God 
is required to connect the rational and sensible worlds, an idea 
which Schleiermacher rejected from the first. See p. 117. 


142 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


ter, is that while science or theory (i. e., Wissenschaft) 
is by no means the only type of experience and thought, 
the other types seem to run their courses within 
the same general, dialectical order revealed by sci- 
ence.** It is a mistake to think that his philosophy of 
religion involves the idea of a “double-truth,” so that 
what is true in science could be false in theology, and 
vice versa.®* 

The universal relevance of “dialectic” to all parts of 
experience is well illustrated in Schleiermacher’s clas- 
sification of the sciences. According to him, there are 
four fundamental sciences, Natural History, Physics, 
History, and Ethics (Naturkunde, Physik, Gesclichts- 
kunde, Ethik).®° This classification is based on a cross- 
division, using as one basis the antithesis between 
nature and reason, and for the other basis the antithesis 
between the empirical and the intellectual. Natural His- 
tory and Physics are sciences which study predomi- 
nantly natural being, while History and Ethics study 
predominantly reasonable being. Natural History and 
History are predominantly empirical, i. e., concerned 
with the collection of particular facts; Physics and 
Ethics are predominantly intellectual, i. e., concerned 


63 Because of this consonance I have used the generic term 
“thought” in my account of Schleiermacher’s “dialectic” (see 
p. 135 and note) without drawing the distinctions between 
esthetic, practical, and theoretic thought which he draws in his 
own Einleitung (see Werke, III, v. 42, pp. 568-577). 

64 Tt has been argued that Schleiermacher’s reference to a 
religious sense of “absolute dependence” implies that religious 
feeling transcends cognitive experience, in which we discover 
only conditional and not absolute dependence. But Schleier- 
macher appears to deny this interpretation of his theory of 
religious emotion expressly in the second edition of the Solilo- 
guies (see above p. 105). The sense of absolute dependence 
aoe not reveal absolute dependence. Cf. also below pp. 154, 

65 Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 32-37. 


APPENDIX 143 


with the discovery of general principles. Thus: 


1. Natural History is the empirical observation of 
all existences in being which is predominantly 
natural. 

2. Physics is the intellectual study of principles or 
essences in being which is predominantly natural. 

3. History is the empirical observation of all exist- 
ences in being which is predominantly reasonable. 

4, Ethics is the intellectual study of principles or 
essences in being which is predominantly rea- 
sonable.*® 


It must be remembered, however, in interpreting the 
above, that according to Schleiermacher’s analysis of 
thought and experience, every item of experience is 
predominantly characterized by one member of a fun- 
damental antithesis in some respects and by the oppo- 
site member in other respects. As a consequence there 
is no subject-matter that belongs to any one of these 
sciences to the exclusion of the rest. All being is in 
some respects the subject-matter of physics, in others 
of ethics, in some of natural history, in others of his- 
tory. And hence, Schleiermacher adds that none of 
these four sciences can be perfected without a like per- 
fection of all the others. “The science of ethics is at 
no time further advanced than the science of physics,” 
and vice versa; both are in like manner mutually de- 
pendent upon history and natural history.®” 
Schleiermacher’s belief in the fundamental unity of 
scientific theory and method, throughout realms fre- 
quently contrasted, such as physics and ethics for in- 


86 Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 34£f. 
87 Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 42ff. 


144 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


stance, is further illustrated by his view that moral 
law is analogous to natural law. In an address deliv- 
ered before the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1825 
on Naturgesetz und Sittengesetz he criticizes the posi- 
tion that natural laws describe the way in which things 
invariably do behave, while moral laws state the way 
in which they ought to behave.** On the contrary, 
says Schleiermacher, both natural and moral laws are 
statements of the way in which things do behave, and 
also of the way in which they ought to behave, if the 
things are beings conforming to the definitions of the 
laws. Natural and moral laws differ only in defining 
and treating of different kinds of beings. Moral be- 
ings conform to moral laws as invariably as do natural 
beings to natural laws, and the latter ought to conform 
to natural laws as truly as the former ought to conform 
to the moral. Furthermore, deviations occur from 
natural laws as well as from moral. Some of these 
deviations indicate that all laws, natural and moral, 
are but approximate generalizations. Others indicate, 
however, that every being stands under a multiplicity 
of laws, and that its conformity to one law, natural 
or moral, is conditioned by its conformity to others. 
Only as conditioned by other than moral laws does a 
being do evil, and hence “the antithesis between good 
and bad falls outside the description of ethics,’ which 
deals only with predominantly moral or reasonable be- 
ing.®? Again, since Schleiermacher defines freedom as 
self-development, and morality as the self-develop- 
ment of a moral being, it follows that only as condi- 


88 Werke, III, v. 2, pp. 397-418. Cf. also Werke, III, v. 5, 
pp. 38ff. 

69 Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 52-53. “Der Gegensaz von gut und 
bose fallt ausser der Sittenlehre.” 


APPENDIX 145 


tioned by other than moral laws is a being brought un- 
der compulsion. “The antithesis between freedom and 
necessity likewise falls outside the description of 
ethics.””° Of course, there is nothing in these princi- 
ples to preclude the possibility of a being developing 
from one kind of being into another kind of being. A 
natural being conforms to natural laws, and a moral 
being to moral laws, but some of these laws may be 
such that the natural being develops into a moral being. 
Finally, it is important in this connection to recall that, 
according to the principles of Schleiermacher’s “dialec- 
tic,’ we should not expect to find any being predomi- 
nantly natural or moral in all respects, but rather pre- 
dominantly the one in some respects, and the other in 
others. 

Ethics, then, is a descriptive science, descriptive of 
the essences, the laws, and the principles to which be- 
ing conforms in so far as it is predominantly reason- 
able. In outlining the formal structure of this science 
Schleiermacher adheres to his view that ethical reality 
manifests itself in the three modes of good, duty, and 
virtue (related as final, formal, and efficient causes of 
the same process.)*1 The fundamental mode, how- 
ever, is that of the good, and this is now defined, in 
terms of the “highest antithesis” disclosed in the “dia- 
lectic,” as a predominantly reasonable interpenetration 
of nature and reason.” It will be recalled that both 
nature and reason, as defined in the “dialectic,” are 
rich in qualities, and hence their interpenetration will 


7 Werke, IIl, v. 5, pp. 63-64. “Der Gegensaz von Freiheit 
und Nothwendigkeit fallt ausser der Sittenlehre.” 

71 Cf. pp. 133 above. A separate division of the Sitten- 
lehre, as published, is devoted to each of these modes in the 
order named. Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 71-84. 

72 Werke, Ill, v. 5, p. 27, 85-87. Cf. above p. 138.. 


146 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


produce many permutations and combinations, in other 
words, a richly varied good. This variety, however, 
will not be a mere medley, but will have a structure, 
since the many qualities of nature and of reason group 
themselves around certain major antitheses subsumed 
under the general antithesis of nature and reason it- 
self."* The interpenetration of nature and reason is 
not the interpenetration of two chaotic manifolds, but 
the crossing of a predominantly organic manifold with 
one predominantly intellectual, and of one predomi- 
nantly individualized with one predominantly untver- 
salized. As a result of this crossing, the realm of the 
good comes to have four great provinces: (1) a prov- 
ince in which nature appears predominantly as the 
organ of a chiefly universal reason, (2) a province in 
which it appears predominantly as the organ of a 
chiefly individualized reason, (3) a province in which 
it appears predominantly as the intelligible symbol of 
a chiefly universal reason, and (4) a province in which 
it appears predominantly as the intelligible symbol of 
a chiefly individualized reason. This description of 
ethical being as characterized by nature’s becoming the 
organ and sign of both universal and individual reason 
was amply foreshadowed in the Soliloquies of 1800. 
Here in Schleiermacher’s later thought the idea is 
worked out more systematically, and finally, the ab- 
stractions are linked up definitely with concrete realms 
of life: the first province with the realm of commerce 
(Verkehr) and its regulation by the state, the second 
with the realm of personal assets (Eigenthum), their 
enjoyment and enhancement in fellowships, the third 


73 See above p. 138. 
74 See above pp. 19-20, and cf. Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 88-96. 


APPENDIX 147 


with the realm of science (Wissen) and its pursuit in 
schools, and the fourth with the realm of religion 
(Gefiihl) and its cultivation in churches.” 

Schleiermacher’s delineation of the domain of ethi- 
cal being with its four provinces can be presented at a 
glance in the following diagram: 





ORGANIC 

Commerce (Verkehr) sities SA Cekia 
,) | Nature the organ of a uni-| Nature the organ of an in- | 4 
< versal reason. dividual reason. < 
es The State Fellowships Q 
LP TO 4 
= Science (Wissen) Religion (Gefihl) ra 
5 | Nature the intelligible sym- | Nature the intelligible sym- | 4 

bol of a universal reason. | bol of an individual reason. 

Schools Churches 
INTELLECTUAL 


This conception of the good controls Schleiermacher’s 
treatment of duties and virtues in the second and third 
parts respectively of his Sittenlehre, quite in accord- 
ance with his theory as to the three modes of ethical 
reality and their relationships. Each province of ethi- 
cal being has its duties, virtues, and goods, determined 
alike by the fundamental character of that province. 
Thus, for example, in the field of commerce and of the 
state, the first duty is: “Enter into every association in 
such a way that your entrance amounts to an assimila- 
tion.”’"® The second duty in the same field is: “Enter 
into every association in such a way as to retain your 


7 Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 120ff. 
78 Werke, Ill, v. 5, p. 439. 


148 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


entire individuality.””7 It is not difficult to infer from 
these typical propositions that Schleiermacher is still 
grappling in the ethical system of his later years with 
that fundamental problem, which as early as 1794 he 
took to be the Kernpunkt of philosophical theory, how 
to do justice at once to the individual and to the sur- 
rounding whole.”® 

To sum up: Schleiermacher’s ethical system is de- 
termined on the formal side by three major factors, 
(1) his conception of the relation between goods, 
duties, and virtues, (2) his view of the major antith- 
eses involved in ethics, and (3) his delineation of the 
four provinces of ethical being. The first of these 
goes back to the earliest days of his philosophizing, 
the second and third largely to the years of his funda- 
mental insights, but with amplifications and systema- 
tization occurring in the later years. On the side of 
content, the system likewise contains much that was 
present in the Speeches on Religion and in the Solilo- 
quies. The most significant material addition of the 
later years is the greater recognition accorded to in- 
stitutional and social ethics, to the place of the state 
and the school especially. These later years, it should 
be remembered, saw the rise of Hegelianism and a 
general coming to the fore of political and social issues 
in Germany.”® Unlike Hegel, however, Schleiermacher 
assigned, in his later as in his earlier years, a large 
sphere of the good to predominantly individual reason. 
How typical of German liberal thought (how unlike 
British liberalism) is his antithesis between “com- 


merce” as a field for state regulation and a realm of 


™ Werke, III, v. 5, p. 445. 
78 See above p. xxxii, 123. 
79 See above pp. lvi-lvii. 


APPENDIX 149 


personal assets, private goods, to be enjoyed and fur- 
thered in free fellowship! How typical of German 
conditions, again, of the organized intellectualism there 
prevailing, is his association of schools and academies 
with the pursuit of science! Behind the highly abstract 
concepts of Schleiermacher’s Dialektik and Stttenlehre 
(and the reader can have no conception, even from the 
foregoing account, how unalleviated their abstraction 
is!) appears the unmistakable image of concrete forms 
of life with which he was in such active contact.*° 


if 


SCHLEIERMACHER’S CONCEPTION OF A PHILOSOPHER 
PRIEST 


Schleiermacher’s position after 1810 as a teacher, 
a member of the government, and a prominent eccle- 
siast gave him personal experience in the various prov- 
inces of ethics distinguished in his Sittenlehre: the 
state, the school, the church, and fellowships. A wit- 
ness to his own principle that human development re- 
quires “an intimate and necessary tie between practice 
and theory,’ he subjected each of these realms to theo- 
retic analysis. In 1817 and 1829 he lectured on poli- 
tics, in 1813, 1820, and 1826 on pedagogy.** But the 

80 Tn the latter portions of the Sittenlehre (Werke, III, v. 5, 
pp. 172-327), where Schleiermacher discusses the realms of 


commerce, fellowship, science, and religion in more detail, the 
incidence of his thought on concrete facts is still more apparent. 


81 See Werke, III, v. 8 for the materials on politics as edited 
by Brandis, and v. 9 for those on pedagogy as edited by Platz. 


150 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


field in which his practical experience was greatest, 
and where his theory proved most fruitful, was cer- 
tainly that of religion and the church. 

The basis of his thought in this field was laid before 
1799, when in his Speeches on Religion he conceived 
religion as essentially an emotional reaction of the in- 
dividual to the universe.*? The perfection of his 
thought in this field came, however, in later years, 
when as a leader in the religious life of his time, he 
conceived of the Kirchenfiirst, a veritable philosopher- 
priest of the church. The Kirchenfiirst is one “who 
attends to the theory and the practice of his church 
with the highest measure of religious interest and of 
scientific spirit combined.’’*? Of course, he shares the 
essential feelings of his church, and wishes to see them 
promoted as an integral part in the good of mankind. 
But in addition he has a knowledge of the conditions 
necessary to this end, and thereby weaves the life of 
his church like a fine thread into the growing texture 
of society. He mediates his religion to the world, not 
in a spirit of blind partisanship, but in the spirit of a 
philosophic knowledge of human good. Thus he be- 
comes the genius of his church, the reason active in its 
‘prosperous development. 

But where is the Kirchenfiirst to be found? Like 
Plato’s philosopher-king he is the product of an ideal 
education. In 1810 the University of Berlin was 
opened with Schletermacher as head of the theological 
faculty. This post of leadership in a new university, 
inaugurated with so many idealistic hopes, gave him 

82 See pp. xlvii-l. 

83 Werke, I, v. 1, p. 8, §9. The section numbers (§) will 


serve to identify passages in other editions of this text. See 
Bibliography, p. 168 


APPENDIX let 


the opportunity to propose a program of ecclesiastical 
education commensurate with his idea of a Kirchen- 
fiirst. In 1811 he published a Brief Exposition of The- 
ological Studies, which outlined the entire field of the- 
ological study as he conceived it, but did not develop 
any portion of that field in detail. Ten years later he 
published Der christliche Glaube, a systematic exposi- 
tion of dogmatic theology. Taken together these two 
books show his conception of the Kuirchenfiirst’s 
equipment fairly well. 

Theology, according to Schleiermacher, is in the 
broadest sense identical with that equipment, and has 
an essentially practical object, which may be defined 
as the harmonious guidance of a church. “Christian 
theology is the sum of scientific knowledge and of 
practical precepts which are necessary for the harmo- 
nious guidance of the Christian Church, i. e., without 
which the ecclesiastical organization of Christianity 
would be impossible.”’*®* This association of theology 
with institutionalized religion is significant. Schleier- 
macher expressly states that the “Christian faith itself 
does not need theology in order to take effect in the 
individual soul or in the family.’’** Theology arises 
with the church, and only becomes a unified, coherent 
discipline in relation to the end of church government. 
Without this end the materials of theology might still 
exist as parts of other disciplines, such as history and 
philosophy, but in relation to this end they are united 
and constitute a positive science. It follows that a 

84 During his professorship at Halle (1804-1806) Schleier- 


macher had worked over the ground of the theological subjects, 
and had lectured in them as well as in philosophy. 


85 Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 6-7, §5. 
86 Werke, I, v. 1, p. 7, §5. 


152 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


theologian, however much he specializes in exegesis, 
or church history, or what not, must keep the architec- 
tonic end of church government in view. Failing in 
this, his work has no overt theological significance, 
and he does not merit the name of theologian. Theo- 
logical education must produce a general comprehen- 
sion of all that appertains to the guidance of a partic- 
ular church.** 

But how is the Kirchenfiirst to conceive his particu- 
lar church and the interests involved in its govern- 
ment? He must go to the past, study the history of 
his church, and learn largely from that source what 
it is and what it needs. He cannot spin an adequate 
conception of his office from some abstract principles, 
or from his own private experience and the desire of 
his heart. Schleiermacher lays great emphasis upon 
historical study as providing the material with which 
reason must work if it is to be in effective touch with 
concrete reality. He shows a full appreciation of 
Bacon’s famous dictum, so proverbially neglected by 
theologians: “the wit and mind of man, if it work 
upon matter . . . worketh according to the stuff and 
is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the 
spider worketh its web, then it is endless, and brings 
forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the 
fineness of thread and of work, but of no substance or 
profit.”’* Moreover, Schleiermacher speaks of histori- 
cal study as if it gave not only material for the mind 
to work upon, but also in part a direction in which to 
work. He seems to agree in a measure with Aristotle 
that things have a proper course of development, im- 


87 Werk2, I, v. 1, p. 7, §§6-8. 
88 Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning. 


APPENDIX 153 


plicit in them from their beginnings. Historical sci- 
ence can, therefore, reveal to the Kuirchenfiirst the 
lines along which the further progress of his church 
lies:® 

In order to do this, however, historical study must 
be wedded to philosophy. For a purely empirical study 
of events will not suffice to distinguish the essential 
from the accidental, and not every event in the history 
of a church is to be regarded as essential. In fact, 
some are to be viewed as errors, and the Kirchenfiirst 
must be trained to recognize them as such even in the 
germ, that is, in their very first beginnings.°° In the 
Christian church it is the function of what Schleier- 
macher calls “philosophical theology,” first to distin- 
guish Christianity from other religions (apologetics), 
and secondly, to define the true Christianity as dis- 
tinguished from its excrescences (polemics).°* To ac- 
complish this work of discrimination philosophical the- 
ology must bring to bear upon the facts of Christian 
history a wisdom gained from ethics, a general com- 
prehension of reasonable being, and from the philos- 
ophy of religion, a critical survey of religion in its 
various forms.®°? The generalizations of speculative 
philosophy and the specific researches of history must 
supplement and validate each other in fixing the locus 
of a church. 


The chief generalizations from his ethics and from 


89 Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 14-15, §§26-28; p. 34, §70. Schleier- 
macher divides the field of theological study into three parts: 
philosophical, historical, and practical theology, each of which 
supplements the others so as to form with them an organic 
whole. 

90 Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 12-13, §§21-24, p. 18, §§35-36. 

91 Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 18-30, §§35-62. 

92 Werke, I, v. 1, p. 18, §35, p. 13, §23. 


154 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


his philosophy of religion, which Schleiermacher 
brings to bear upon Christian history in order to fix 
the locus of his own church, are briefly set forth in 
the introduction to his Der christliche Glaube. First 
and foremost is the proposition that “the essential 
basis of a church is piety, a state of feeling rather 
than of knowledge or of morals.’’? This, of course, is 
the central point in his theory of religion as given in 
the Speeches on Religion. But in Der christliche 
Glaube he adds a thesis as to the general character of 
piety, which helps to identify religious feeling more 
specifically. The feelings which accompany our 
thoughts and deeds are of two kinds, he says, those 
in which we feel ourselves to be passive, re- 
ceptive, suffering affectation from without, and those 
in which we feel ourselves as active or expressive, as 
effecting changes in something beyond us. There are 
no feelings, he holds, in which we sense ourselves as 
purely and completely active without a trace of recep- 
tivity, but there are feelings in which we feel that 
even our own activity is received from something not 
ourselves. These feelings of absolute dependence 
(schlechthinniges Abhangigkeitsgefiihl) are the relig- 
ious feelings.°* This emphasis upon dependence as the 
criterion of religious feeling is not absent from Schlei- 
ermacher’s early writings. The pietistic consciousness 
of his boyhood was primarily one of repose in God. 
But in the Speeches, religious feeling is represented 
not only as a sense of dependence on the Universe, 
but also as an aspiration toward, as an openness to the 


Universe.** In placing greater emphasis on the feeling 
93 Werke, I, v. 3, p. 6. 
94 Werke, I, v. 3, p. 15. 
95 See above p. xlviiff. 


APPENDIX 155 


of dependence in his later writings Schleiermacher 
brought his view of religion closer to traditional Chris- 
tian theology. 

This religious sense of absolute dependence, he re- 
gards as a natural element in human consciousness, 
not to be derived from or supplanted by any other. 
Hence the church, resting on such piety, is a natural 
group like the family, like the state, permanently 
rooted in human nature. It is not an association formed 
to serve a temporary need of certain human societies. 
A church is a communion of individuals having a simi- 
lar sense of dependence upon the Universe.°® Theolo- 
gies and rituals express various aspects of the life of 
such communions, but the nucleus of a church is the 
piety that pervades it. The Kirchenfiirst, therefore, 
must comprehend his church in the light of its piety, 
understanding its creed and practice by reference to 
that, and not vice versa. The essential, architectonic 
wisdom for an ecclesiastic is a knowledge of the relig- 
ious sense peculiar to his church, for without the 
leaven of that knowledge all theological and liturgical 
learning remains heavy and inert. 

But how is this animating principle of religion re- 
vealed to the soul? Is the inner light of theological 
wisdom a free gift of God, or is there some discipline 
by which religious insight can be perfected at its very 
center? Schleiermacher holds that a comparative 
study of religions, if carried on in a philosophic spirit, 
is very helpful.®’ For such study reveals, as it were, 
the dimensions of piety, its essential factors, and in 


so doing gives an approach, at least, by way of defini- 
96 Werke, I, v. 3, p. 32. 


97 Werke, I, v. 3, pp. 38-67. Cf. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 17-18, 
§§32-33 ff. 


156 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


tions to the indefinable, religious emotions themselves. 
If we are to know a specific form of piety, we must 
know, first of all, the character of its emotional organi- 
ration. This is its first dimension. The second is the 
view of the universe with which this emotional organi- 
zation is fused. And the third is the historic context 
or tissue of events significantly related to the other 
two. From his own comparative researches Schleier- 
macher comes to the conclusion that the most impor- 
tant difference in emotional organization, from the 
religious point of view, is the difference between an 
esthetic and a teleological organization of the emo- 
tions. In esthetic piety the impulses toward a natural 
enjoyment of the immediate predominate over the im- 
pulses making for moral reform; in teleological piety 
the reverse is the case. Mohammedanism is mainly 
esthetic, Judaism and Christianity teleological. The 
latter are differentiated emotionally from each other in 
that the first expresses primarily a need for reconcilia- 
tion, the second for redemption. These three great re- 
ligions are thus very different in respect to their emo- 
tional character, but they all seem to Schleiermacher 
to be on the same metaphysical level, namely, that of 
monotheism. He believes there is a progress discern- 
ible in man’s knowledge of the universe from a state 
wherein the idea of a universe or totality of things is 
entirely absent from human imagination to the state 
wherein men begin to conceive the whole of things 
vaguely as an interplay of powers, and finally to a con- 
ception of the universe as one great ordered system, the 
idea of modern science, Religious emotion combined 
with ideas of the first stage in metaphysical develop- 
ment gives rise to fetichism, in which piety is referred 


APPENDIX 157 


to some specific object rather than to the whole of 
things. Then come the various stages of polytheism, 
and finally monotheism. Judaism, Christianity, and 
Mohammedanism are all on the monotheistic level. 
Pantheism is treated as a variant of monotheism, aris- 
ing in the endeavor to minimize anthropomorphism in 
the conception of the Deity. Thus, Schleiermacher, 
believing that the metaphysical development of human- 
ity through the progress of science is toward a con- 
ception of an Infinite Whole, believes also that there 
is a progress in religion towards monotheism. But he 
develops no theory of progress in the religious emo- 
tions themselves. Likewise, he has no general theory 
as to the nature of that tissue of historical events 
which, according to him, is also part and parcel of 
every living religion, a third dimension, as it were, of 
piety. The only generalization which he ventures in 
this regard is the observation that first beginnings are 
extremely important in religion. Thus in Christianity 
everything is referred back to Christ, and the influence 
of the early Christians is persistent.%® 

On the basis of such theories and inquiries Schleier- 
macher defines Christianity as “a monotheistic religion, 
in which piety is teleological and focussed upon the 
redemption wrought by Christ.”°° Every Kirchen- 
fiirst, he holds, must pursue a similar quest for such 
guiding concepts and definitions, if he would wisely 
compass the practical end of church government. The 
quest is historical and philosophic; neither historical 
learning, nor philosophical speculation alone will suf- 


98 Werke, I, v. 3, pp. 38-67. Cf. this whole analysis of piety, 
which Schleiermacher called his “philosophy of religion,’ with 
the fifth of the Speeches on Religion. See above pp. 1i-liii. 

99 Werke, I, v. 3, p. 67. 


158 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


fice, but each must supplement the other in order to 
yield the kind of theoretic insight which has signifi- 
cance for practice: 2? 

In describing the historical equipment of a Kirchen- 
first, Schleiermacher is fully as constructive as in his 
treatment of the philosophical aspects of ecclesiastical 
education, for he had both a craftsman’s acquaintance 
with the tools of research and a well-considered ideal 
of historical study.*°t His whole habit of mind was 
appreciative of the past, and following the impulse of 
this appreciation he discovered, in a measure unusual 
for his time, the outlines of cultural history in Europe. 
He was convinced that a general survey of human his- 
tory as a whole is indispensable to the Kirchenfiirst, 
since the development of churches and religions can 
be understood only in connection with the development 
of all mankind.*°? But while advocating this broad 
perspective, he also laid great emphasis on the impor- 
tance of exegesis, for his analysis of piety had caused 
him to believe that an accurate knowledge of a religion 
in its first beginnings is very helpful to an understand- 
ing of its essence. 

Exegesis, therefore, being the study of a religion in 
its original forms and documents, is the most impor- 
tant single department of historical study for the 
Kirchenfiirst. Schleiermacher makes the require- 
ments in this field very stringent, and outlines them 
thoroughly. “Every specialist in exegesis must be 
able to construe the text of the canon critically, while 
every theologian, whether specializing in exegesis or 

100 Werke, I, v. 1, p. 15-16, §§29-31. 


101 Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 34-100, §§69-256. See also above p. 
120 and note. 


102 Verke, I, v. 1, pp. 40, §§85-86, p. 66, §165. 


APPENDIX 159 


no, must master the principles and methods of historic 
criticism, and must have a general knowledge of the 
most important critical sources and their relative 
worth.”?°° The Christian church must develop an 
expert knowledge of ancient languages among its own 
theologians, since the canonical writings are not in- 
teresting enough from the purely linguistic point of 
view to secure adequate critical attention from lay 
scholars.‘°* Such attention is a constant requirement 
of the church, for the work of critically interpreting 
the canon can never be regarded as completed. Exege- 
sis is a permanent discipline, repeatedly furnished 
with fresh problems by new discoveries and by the 
growing intellectual sensibility of mankind.*® 

Though Schleiermacher’s account of exegetical sci- 
ence in his Brief Exposition of Theological Studies is 
very full and illuminating, the general spirit and the 
philosophical presuppositions of his own exegetical 
work can be appreciated still better by examining his 
specific contributions to the field. For instance, an ex- 
amination of his Life of Jesus shows that he treats the 
Gospels as historical narratives, inaccurate perhaps in 
certain respects, but valuable, nevertheless, as record- 
ing actual events of religious significance. This atti- 
tude assumes that the religious significance of the Gos- 
pels is lodged in the events they narrate rather than 
in the narration itself or in the spirit of the writer. If 
it were primarily in the latter, the historic validity of the 
Gospels might be a matter of secondary importance. 
But Schleiermacher does not treat it so; he takes the 
records, and tries to construct therefrom a narrative, 


103 Werke, I, v. 1, p. 53, §§123-124. 
104 Werke. I, v. 1, pp. 60-61, §147. 
105 Werke, I, v. 1, p. 60, §145, p. 46ff., §103. 


160 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


which he regards as both historically valid and relig- 
iously significant. For example, in his discussion of 
the Virgin Birth, he maintains not only that a Virgin 
Birth would have no religious value, but also that the 
Gospels do not declare it to have been a fact.1°* Simi- 
larly, in his treatment of the miracles of Jesus, he tries 
to show that the Gospels report as facts only such hap- 
penings as make the miracles religiously valuable." 
Schleiermacher conceived the divinity of Jesus to 
consist in his special relation to God, whereby he awak- 
ened in other men-the Christian consciousness of re- 
demption. Thus, in his treatment of the Gospel nar- 
rative he prefers the Johannine emphasis upon Jesus’s 
message, and the significance of its eternal truth for 
the human soul.?°® But he also accepts as historically 
correct many of the incidents emphasized in the other 
Gospel accounts of Jesus’s life. He believes, for exam- 
ple, that Jesus did effect remarkable cures, and he be- 
lieves also in the resurrection. He insists, however, 
that these unique acts and powers of Jesus must be 
regarded as fully compatible with human nature when 
spiritually perfected by the influence of God.*®? Jesus, 
that is, was fully human, and at the same time so 
perfected. From these observations it follows that 
Schleiermacher was a supernaturalist, if it be super- 
naturalism to believe in the resurrection and in the 
cures of jesus. But if supernaturalism means that 


106 Werke, I, v. 6, pp. 58-64. This Life of Jesus had consid- 
erable influence upon D. F. Strauss’s better known work. 

107 Werke, I, v. 6, pp. 206ff. 

108 Werke, L v. 6, pp. 225, 245, 273ff. Cf. this Life of Jesus 
with the Speeches on Religion, p. 246ff. And see pp. lii-liii. 
also Schleiermacher’s Wetnachtsfeier, a dialogue on the theme 
of Christ’s Meuse 

109 Werke, I, v. 6, pp. 214ff. 


APPENDIX 161 


the world of God is not the natural world, but another 
world, then Schleiermacher was not a supernaturalist. 
For he believed that in truth there is but one order of 
things, the order of God. 

That Schleiermacher was so much concerned with 
the interpretation of the Gospels may suggest a strong 
strain of traditionalism, if not of authoritarianism, in 
his thought. But he never abandoned his conception 
of religion as a free field for individuality, nor his 
idea of the church as a fluid association. He only 
emphasized more and more the intellectual responsi- 
bility of the individual, and especially of the Kirchen- 
fiirst, to conceive correctly the real relations between 
his religion and that of others. The moral of Schleier- 
macher’s attention to the past was not conservatism, 
but individualism through spiritual finesse. Exegesis 
and church history are not intended to bind the indi- 
vidual, but to help him discover himself through the 
study of others. At least, this is where the emphasis 
falls. The Kirchenfiirst is intellectually and spiritually 
obligated to recognize heresy as heresy and schism as 
schism ; such recognition, however, does not imply that 
what is heretical or schismatic from the point of view 
of his own church is any less valuable to mankind than 
his orthodoxy, or any less religious.” 

But what is heretical from the point of view of a 
given church? How is the Kirchenfiirst to answer 
that question? He must put himself on the track of 
orthodoxy by taking his religious symbols from a 
source recognized by his church, and he must follow 
a certain rationale in their interpretation. This method 
will not lead him to conclusions which all orthodox 


119 |Verke, I, v. 1, pp. 74-80, §§203-204. 


162 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


members of his church accept fully and exactly, for 
even within orthodoxy there are individual differences, 
but it will keep him within the field of orthodoxy.*™ 
Schleiermacher is no innovator in his conception of 
the sources from which orthodox religious symbols are 
to be drawn, for he holds that a religious symbol must 
have the sanction of tradition or of general recognition 
within the church for which it is considered orthodox. 
Thus, in the case of the Evangelical Church all propo- 
sitions which claim to be dogmas must call to witness 
either the Evangelical Confessions, or the New Testa- 
ment, or a general recognition by the church of their 
dogmatic character.11* But he is most original in his 
idea of the rationale by which authenticated religious 
symbols are to be interpreted. This, in fact, is the 
point at which his general theory of religion is in clos- 
est and most fruitful touch with his theology. 

The first step in the interpretation of religious sym- 
bols is for the Kirchenfiirst to discriminate between 
different kinds of symbols, Schleiermacher distin- 
guishes between three main types: poetic, hortatory, 
and didactic (dichterische, rednerische, und darstellend 
belehrende). Didactic symbols which arise in the at- 
tempt to teach or instruct, are more stable in meaning 
than poetic or hortatory symbols, and hence a logic of 
their interpretation can be more definitely formu- 
lated.118 

The cardinal principle in Schleiermacher’s interpre- 


111 Were, I, v. 1, pp. 76-77, §196. 

112 Werke, I, v. 3, p. 144. 
_ 43 Werke, I, v. 3, pp. 99-107ff. Schleiermacher was personally 
interested in poetic and hortatory symbolism as well as in dog- 
matics. It is scarcely necessary to remark this of so great a 
preacher. He also participated in editing a Hymnology and in 
many decisions of the Evangelical Church regarding ritual. 


APPENDIX 163 


tation of didactic symbols or dogmas is to regard them 
in the light of the religious consciousness from which 
they spring. Consider, for example, the dogma that 
(sod created the world. It would be a mistake, says 
Schleiermacher, to interpret this doctrine as a scien- 
tific proposition about God and the world, to seek em- 
pirical verification of it, or to look for some first prin- 
ciples from which it can be logically deduced. Human 
experience and human reason will not suffice to estab- 
lish such a proposition in the sense in which the relig- 
ious man believes it. If that sense is to be preserved, 
the dogma must be viewed as a confession of faith, 
that is, as the expression of a certain consciousness in 
which the man feels the world to be dependent upon 
God.** The function of the dogma is to communicate 
that consciousness. Consider another example. In the 
Christian tradition theologians have wrestled much 
with the “problem of evil.’ Dogma says that God is 
omnipotent and all-good. Why then is there evil? 
Schleiermacher suggests that the difficulty arises from 
treating these dogmas as verifiable descriptions of fact, 
which must be rendered consistent with each other. 
But the Kirchenfiirst, the wise man who knows relig- 
ion well, will take them as a system of symbols appro- 
priate to the expression of Christian religious feeling. 
The Christian has a double consciousness, a sense of 
the divine and a sense of that which is not divine. The 
latter, existing in him together with the former, gives 
him a conviction of his own imperfection. Yet he also 
has a faith that the consciousness of the divine can 
supplant the other consciousness, as in Christ, and that 


114 Werke, I, v. 3, pp. 182ff. 


164 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


then he would be perfect, lacking nothing.7*%* Such 
are the feelings which these Christian dogmas express. 
“The problem of evil” is not a problem to be solved 
by the theoretic reconciliation of propositions, but 
rather a religious problem, involving the triumph of 
one state of consciousness over another. A system of 
dogmas is not a logical system, but a system of things 
felt in the religious mind. The Kirchenfiirst will not 
try, therefore, to deduce one dogma from another, but 
will trace each back to the original feeling which 
brought it forth, and which sustains, justifies and 
explains it.178 

In accordance with this fundamental principle 
Schleiermacher tries to interpret the dogmas of Evan- 
gelical Christianity as a system of religious symbols 
expressing a consciousness of triumph over sin and 
evil through the redemption wrought by Christ. This 
is the main idea underlying his chief work on dogmatic 
theology, Der christliche Glaube, a work of beautiful 
lucidity in which both the strength and limitations of 
his thought stand clearly revealed. It was not his 
achievement to give the great religious concepts of sin 
and evil and redemption a deeper meaning. His essen- 
tial accomplishment was to view these concepts as 
applying to a kind of experience that could be assimi- 


115 Werke, I, v. 4, pp. 6ff. 


116 This is the new principle in Schleiermacher’s interpreta- 
tionof dogma, but he compromises with tradition in manv ways. 
In Der christliche Glaube he finds it necessary to present the dog- 
mas of the Church in three different aspects: (1) as descrip- 
tions of God, (2) as descriptions of God’s relations to the 
world, (3) as descriptions of human feeling in the presence of 
God. But he hastens to add that “it is an analysis of religious 
consciousness which must underlie all three of these presenta- 
tions as the only scientific basis for the interpretation of 
dogma.” See Werke, I, v. 3, pp. 160-164. 


APPENDIX 165 


lated to other kinds of experience, in particular to 
modern science and morals. His true originality, 
like that of his contemporaries in German philos- 
ophy, was speculative, and the main trend of his spec- 
ulation was to mediate between the various kinds of 
value to which he was sensitive. His work is charac- 
terized throughout by the attempt to do justice to 
divergent interests. He sought to combine the pre- 
servation of religious traditions with the fullest devel- 
opment of science and of individualized morality. No 
mind more perfectly illustrates the mediating charac- 
ter of thought in the early nineteenth century than 
does Schleiermacher’s in the second half of his life. 
At the same time, his speculation culminates, as the 
speculation of a mind tinged with romantic idealism 
should culminate, in the conception of an infinite task 
with infinite opportunities of salvation. For the har- 
monious adjustment of different human interests is an 
infinite task, and where the interests involved are those 
of knowledge, personality, and communion with the 
universe, who can doubt that salvation is near at hand? 












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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 


I. ScHLEIERMACHER’S WorRKS 


German works marked with an asterisk (*) have been trans- 
lated into English, in whole, or in part. 


SAMMTLICHE WERKE. Berlin, Reimer, 1835-64. 31 volumes. 
Referred to in this text as Werke. Published in three parts, 
theological, homiletical, and philosophical, cited as I, II, 
and III respectively. 


SCHLEIERMACHERS WERKE: AUSWAHL IN VIER BANDEN. Leip- 
zig, Meiner, 1910-’13. A convenient collection of major 
works. Volume II is especially important as offering the 
first critical edition of the manuscripts on ethics in the 
Berlin archives. 


*Aus SCHLEIERMACHER’S LEBEN, IN BrIEFEN. Berlin, Reimer, 
1858-’63. 4 volumes. Referred to as Briefe. Volumes 1 
and 2 were translated into English by F. Reivan, London, 
1860. These are cited as Letters. 


*UBER DIE RELIGION. Critical editions by G. C. B. Punjer, 
Braunschweig, 1879, and R. Otto, Gottingen, 1899, 4th ed., 
1920. Referred to as Reden. Translated into English by 
John Oman, London, 1894, and cited as On Religion. 


*MoNoLoGEN. Critical edition by F. M. Schiele, Leipzig, 
Meiner, 1902. Contains an excellent bibliography on Schlei- 
ermacher’s ethics, pp. xxxvi-xlviii. Referred to as Schiele. 
A French translaton of the Monologen, 3rd edition, by 
Louis Segond was published at Geneva and Paris, 1837, 
and 1864. 

GRUNDLINIEN EINER KRITIK DER BISHERIGEN SITTENLEHRE. 

$3 Critical edition by Herm. Mulert, Leipzig, Meiner, 1908. 

DIALEKTIK. Critical edition by J. Halpern, Berlin, 1903. 

SCHLEIERMACHERS ENTWURFE ZU EINEM SYSTEM DER SITTEN- 
LEHRE. Critical edition of the manuscripts on ethics in the 
Berlin archives, by Otto Braun. This is volume II of the 
Auswahl, mentioned above, Leipzig, Meiner, 1913. 


168 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


*\WEIHNACHTSFEIER. Critical edition by Herm. Mulert, Leip- 
zig, Diirr, 1908. Translated into English by W. Hastie, 1890. 

*KURZE DARSTELLUNG DES THEOLOGISCHEN STUDIUMS. Critical 
edition by Heinr. Scholz, Leipzig, 1910, published in Quel- 
lenschriften zur Geschichte des Protestantismus, Heft 10. 
reer tanies into English by William Farrer, Edinburgh, 
1850. 

*DER CHRISTLICHE GLAUBE, NACH DEN GRUNDSATZEN DER EVAN- 
GELISCHEN KirRCHE IM ZUSAMMENHANGE DARGESTELLT. 
Good editions are to be found in Werke, I., vols. 3 and 4, 
and in the Bibliothek theologischer Klassiker, Bd. 13-16, 
Gotha, 1889. Part I of a critical edition by Carl Stange 
appeared at Leipzig, 1910. The Theology of Schleiermacher 
by George Cross, Chicago, 1911, contains much of Der 
christliche Glaube in translation or paraphrase. 

Significant early manuscripts and notes are published in part 
by Wilhelm Dilthey in an Appendix to his Leben Schleier- 
machers, Berlin, Reimer, 1870, cited as Dilthey, Appendix. 


For further works and editions see the exhaustive bibliography 
in Ueberwegs, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 11th 
edition, revised by K. Oesterreich, vol. IV, pp. 102-104. 


II. COMMENTARIES 


Bauer, Jou. Schleiermacher als patriotischer Prediger, Gies- 
sen, Topelmann, 1908. Helpful for understanding Schleier- 
macher’s relation to public life and practical affairs. 

ge Wan. Schleiermacher’s Theologie, Nordlingen, Beck, 

876. 

Cross, Georce. The Theology of Schleiermacher, Chicago, 
University Press, 1911. A condensed presentation of his 
chief theological work, “The Christian Faith.” 

DittHEY, WILHELM. Leben Schleiermachers. Berlin, Reimer, 
1870. An absolutely indispensable work for the study of 
Schleiermacher, and a very valuable description of the 
Berlin romantic group. Referred to as Dilthey. The 
Appendix, pp. 1-145, publishes manuscript material from 
diaries, etc., which throws much light upon Schleiermach- 
er’s philosophic development. The new edition by Her- 
mann Mulert, Berlin and Leipzig, DeGruyter, 1922, omits 
this Appendix, but adds more than 250 pages based on Dil- 
they’s notes for a second volume, treating of Schleiermach- 
er’s life from 1800 to 1807. I cite this new edition as N. E. 

Di_tTHEY, WILHELM. Schleiermacher. A fine brief account in 
the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. 31, 1890. Repub- 
lished in vol. IV of Dilthey’s Gesammelte Schriften. 
Important for the second half of Schleiermacher’s life. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 


Gunpotr, FriepricH. Schleiermachers Romantik. A very fine 
criticism of the romantic spirituality of the Monologen. 
Published in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fur Literatur- 
wissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, Bd. II, Heft 3, 1924- 
25 


Hay, Rupotr. Die romantische Schule. Berlin, 1870. 3rd 
edition revised by Oskar Walzel. A standard work of 
fine penetration. 


Hay, Rupotr. Gesammelte Aufsitze. Contains an illuminat- 
ing review of Dilthey’s Leben Schletermachers. 


Huser, Eucen. Die Entwickelung des Religionsbegriffs bet 
Schleiermacher. Leipzig, 1901. Careful comparison of 
Schleiermacher’s various treatments of this theme. 


Loew, W. Das Grundproblem der Ethik Schletermachers in 
seiner Bezichung zu Kant’s Ethik, Berlin, 1914. Illumi- 
nating as to the problems raised by Kant and their sig- 
nificance for his successors. 


PASCENDI GkEGIS. This famous encyclical of Pius X, condemn- 
ing modernism (see The programme of modernism, Put- 
man, N. Y., 1908) while not mentioning Schleiermacher, 
gives a very clear exposition of the general philosophy of 
religion which he helped to produce, and of the objections 
advanced by the Roman Catholic Church. 


SELBIE, WILLIAM. Schletermacher, a Critical and Historical 
Study. London, Chapman and Hall, 1913. Presents Schlei- 
ermacher as a theologian, but offers little with reference 
to his philosophy. 

TROELTSCH, E., Natorp, P., and others. Schleiermacher, der 
Philosoph des Glaubens. Berlin-Schoneberg, 1910. A very 
fine group of studies, presenting different sides of Schleier- 
inacher’s activity, as churchman, educator, statesman, and 
philosopher, in the perspective of contemporary scholarship 
and conditions. 

WeEHRUNG, G. Der geschichtsphilosophische Standpunkt Schlei- 
ermachers. Strassburg, 1907. Good for the setting of 
Schleiermacher’s thought in the history of philosophy. 

WILLICH, EHRENFRIED VON. Aus Schleiermacher’s Hause. Ber- 
lin, Reimer, 1909. Intimate pictures of Schleiermacher’s 
family life by his step-son. 

The sections on Schleiermacher in Hasting’s Encyclopedia of 
Religion and Ethics, and in J. T. Merz, A History of Euro- 
fean Thought in the Nineteenth Century, are perhaps the 
best brief accounts in English. 


For further commentaries see the comprehensive list in Ueber- 
wegs, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 11th edition, 
revised by K. Oesterreich, vol. IV, pp. 783-785. 


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INDEX 


Action, 28, 38, 42. 

Activity, inner xlv, 16, 82-83, 
101-103. 

Albertini, xvi. 

Ambiguity, 133. 

Anthropomorphism, 157. 

Antitheses, in thought and 
reality, 137 ff.; in human 
nature, 34 ff.; in ethics, 
145 ff. 

Apologetics, 153. 

Aristotle, xiv, 117 & note, 
134, 152-153. 

Art, xliii, xlix, 23-24, 34-37, 
35 note, 55, 64-68, 88. 

eee nature of the, 34 ff., 


Atheism, xlviii. 

Athenaeum, The, xxxviii, x]. 

Authority, religious, 1, 161- 
162; political, lvi, 146-149. 

Autonomy, 101-103. 

Bacon, Francis, 152. 

Barby, xvi-xvii. 

Being, thought and, 135 ff. 

Berlin, xxxv-xxxvii, 1lv-lvi, 
76-78 & notes; University 
ao) hd a TO 

Bible, 1, 158-162. 

Bibliography, 167-169. 

Briefe, Schleiermacher’s, vx 
& note. 

Brinkmann, xxxiv. 

Canon, 158-159 ff. 

Certainty, xx, 26-27, 29. 

Charité, xxxv 

Christ, xii, vx-xvi, vxii, lii 
a 83 & note, 157, 159- 


Christianity, xii ff., 1i-liii, 
Ivii, 150-151, 156-157,163- 
164. 

Church, 1, 147, 149 ff., 151- 
152, 154-155; Evangelical, 
162; Reformed, xxv, 
xxxv, Ivi-lvii; universal, 


Civilization, xliii-xliv, 50 ff. 

Classical scholarship, xix, 
Soxiticy liv; 

Community spiritual, xliv, 
17, 54-56, 109 note 11. 
Conduct; 29, -.65 tts and 

note. 

Conscience, xlii-xliii, 27-29, 
27 note. 

Contemplation, 13, 22, 37; 
in relation to action, 23-24, 
28, 42. See also “Self”. 

Conversion, xviii, xlii, 28- 


Creation, 24, 163. 

Culture, xxvili, xxxvii- 
SV COU Lee O Lee 
77; in relation to religion, 
xlvii ff.; See also “Self”. 

Death, xlIvii, 86-88, 89. 

Dependence, sense of, xviii, 
105 note 23, 120, 142 and 
note, 154-155. 

Der Christliche Glaube, Sch- 
leiermacher’s lvii-Iviii, 149- 
165. 

Destiny, xliv-xlv, 69-70 ff., 
77-81, 86 ff. 

De Wette, lvi. 

Dialectic, 134-142, 135 note. 

Dialektik, Schleiermacher’s 
135 note. 


172 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


Dichotomies, see “Anti- 
theses”. 


Dilthey, Wilhelm, xiv note, 


116 & note, 116 ff. 

Disillusionment, XXXill- 
SOCKIV, Noe 

Divine life, 22-23. 

Division of labor, 51 ff. 

Dogma, 161-165. 

Dohna, family of Count. 
Xxxiv-xxxv, 74, 124. 

Doubts, religious, xvii-xix; 
moral, xxxiv, 29-30 ff. 

Dreifaltigkeitskirche, lv-lvi. 

Drossen, xxxiii. 

Duty, xxxi-xxxii, xlii-xliti, 
30-31 ff., 132-133, 145-148. 

Eberhard, E. A., xix-xx, 
XXV. 

Economic order, 51-53, 146- 
149. 

Education, 60 & note, 146- 
149 & note; religious, 
150-159 ff. 

Ellerian sect, xiv. 

Emotion, 17-18, 154 ff.; re- 
Zoe OAGLT: 

Empiricism, xix-xx,  xli- 
Kiyo xlvaatte0-1G.: 70) 
Epistemology, see ‘“Knowl- 

edge’”’. 

Equality, 52-54 ff. 

Equanimity, xviii, 42, 75 & 
note, 88. 

Ethics, xxxi-xxxii, xlviii, 
5-6, 26-33, 53, 98-103, 116- 
119, 124-125, 127-129, 141: 
relation to religion, xlviii, 
22 & note, 117, 141; sys- 
tematic ethics, 132-134, 
142-149, 

Evil, xlv, 92-94, 144; prob- 
lem of, 163-164. 

ere Ivii, 131, 158-159 

Experience, Iviii-lix, 138, 
141-142; religious, xviii, 
Xxxii, xlvi-li, 22 & note, 


25 & note, 38 & note, 120- 
121, 127-128, 140-142, 147, 
154 f. See also “Em- 
piricism”’. 

Family, 1-li, 57-58, 78-80, 
146-149, 151, 155. 

Feeling, see “Emotion”. 

Fetichism, 156-157. 

Fichte, xxxv-xxxvili, xl, 
xliii, lv, 23 & note,-27 & 
note, 30-31 & notes, 71 & 
note, 132, 136 & note. 

Frederick the Great, xxv, 
XXXVI. 

Freedom, xxiii, xlii, xliv- 
xlv, lvi, 16-21, 28-29, 31- 
32, 60 & note, 69-75 ff., 
101-103, 119, 144-145 & 
notes. 

French Revolution, xxii- 
XXili, xxxill, liv, 62 & 
note, 74-75. 

Friendship, xvii, xxxili, 
XXXVii, xliii-xliv, 37, 43- 
. 56-57, 74, 84-88, 146 
ff. 

Future, the, 56, 61 ff. 

God, xviii, xlii, xlviii, 12, 
24-25, 69-70, 87, 117, 120, 
137, 140-142, 163-164. 

Goethe, xxiv, xxXv-xxxviii. 

Good, xxxi-xxxii, 132-134, 
145 ff.; swmmum bonum, 
xxxi-xxxii, 116-117, 145- 
146; calculus of goods, 
13-14. 

Greek culture, see ‘Hellen- 
ism’. 

Grunow, Eleonore, liv, 78- 
80, 79 note, 86 & note. 
Halle, University of, xvii- 
XxXi, XXV, xxvii, lw dol: 

151 note. 

Harmony, see “Equanimity”’. 

Heaven, 17, 25, 117. 

Hedonism, xxxi, 15, 116- 
117. 

Hegel, xxi, xxviii, lvii, 120, 


128 & note, 139-140, 148. 


INDEX 


Hellenism, xvii, xix, xXxi- 
xxii, 77; see also “Classi- 
cal scholarship”. 

Hengstenberg, lvi. 

Herder, xxix, 76 & note, 
121. 

Herz, Madame, xxxvii, xli, 
86 & note. 

Heteronomy, 133. 

Higher world, 12, 23. 

Hilmer, xvi. 

History, xxi, xxxvii, Ilvi- 
Ilvii, 76-77, 120, 142-143, 
152-153, 157, 160. See 
also “Schleiermacher’’. 

Humanity, xxviii, xliii, 17, 
22a 20 ee DU, 742/64 it 
kinds of, xliii, 34 ff., 106- 
107. 

Ideal, xxxiti, 31-32, 50 ff., 
71, 101-103, 145-146. 

Idealism, xxx-xxxi, 16-17, 
56, 92-94, 105-106, 129-130, 
135-136 & notes, 140 & 
note, 164-165. 

peu eon, xlv, 14, 33, 81- 


Immortality, xlii, 24-25, 87- 


Individuality, xxxii,  xliii, 
xlix, 1-li, 20, 30-34, 38-41, 
56-60, 75-76, 95, 106-107, 
123, 124-129, 136, 146-148; 
development of, 28-34, 
38-41, 78-79, 106-107; in- 
dividual and _ universal, 
xxxii, 30-34, 127-128 & 
note, 138-141, 146-148. 

Infinite, xlii, xlvii-xlix, 12, 
Peoria 22. 

Baeled 24 & note, 135-136 


Inwardness, xi, xliv-xlv, 9, 
15-16, 18, 21, 26-27, 43, 
59, 66-68, 69, 82-83,100- 
103. 

Jakobi, 121. 

Jena, xxxvi. 


Judaism, li, 156-157. 


173 


Kant wc ene oy ee 


xliii, 20 note, 30-32, 62 
note, 74-75 & note, 116- 
123, 125-126, 132,138, 140, 
141 & note. 

“Kirchenfiirst”’, philosopher- 
priest, 149 ff. 

Knowledge, 13-14, 76-77; 
theory of, xix-xxi, 134- 
143. See also “Science”. 

Kritik der Sittenlehre, liv-lv, 
132-134, 167. 

Kurge Darstellung, lv, 151 
f{f., 168. 

Laissez-faire, lvi, 59 & note, 
148-149. 

Landsberg, xxxv. 

Language, 64-68, 136 note 
32) 

Law, xxii, xxviii ff., 101- 
103; moral, xxxi-xxxil, 
xliii, 29-31, 116-119 ff., 
143-145; natural, xiii, xxii, 
xX LEO tie 143-145 + 
legalistic thinking, xxviii 
fe 

Leibniz, xxv-xxvili, 123. 

Leisure, xxxvii, 36, 43. 

Liberalism, xii-xiv, lvi, 54, 
109-110, 148-150. 

Tite Mion no Lon h 22-2420; 
69-70, 90 ff., 98 ff.; fruit 
and blossom of, 98-103; 
divine, 12, 23. 

Logic, xix-xxi, 134-140. 

Love, xliii, 37-39, 45, 78-81, 
127-128. 

Manners, xlvii, 65-68, 65 
note. 

Marriage, xliv, liv, 57-58, 
78-81. 

Materialism, 16-17, 51-52, 
90-92 ff,; see also 
“world”, and “economic 
order”. 


Mathematics xxi-xxii, xxvii- 
xxviii, 12 & note. 
Mechanism, Il, 69-70. 


174 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


Meditation, xli-xlii; see also 
“Contemplation”’. 


Metaphysics, xxvi-xxvii ff., 


xxxii, xlvii-xlix, 16-18, 
105, 120-123, 125-130, 134 
ff., 156-157; see also 
“Reality”, & “Dialectic”. 

Metternich, lvi, 148-149. 

Miracles, 67, 159-161. 

Modernism, xii-xiv, 1, lili, 
lix-lx, 150-151, 162-165. 

Mohammedanism, li, 156- 
157. 

Monologen, Schleiermach- 
er’s, xi, xxxix-xlvi, I-lll 
text, 128-130, 167. 

Monotheism, 156-157. 

Morality, see “Ethics’’. 

Moral law, see “Law”. 

Moravians, xii-xvili, 28 & 
note, 74 & note, 85 & 
note, 127 & note, 154. 

Nationalism, xxv, lv-Ivi, 58- 
59, 109-110, 148-149. 

Naturalism, xvii, 160-161; 
see also “Law, natural”. 

Natural history, 142-143. 

Natural law, see “Law”. 

Natural religion, xxxii, 
xl vii-xlviii. 

Nature, xxxii, xlvii-xlviii, 
10, 36; relation to reason, 
138-139, 145-146; human 
nature, see “Humanity”; 
see also ‘Materialism’. 

Necessity, xxxii-xxxiil, xlii, 
14-15, 17-21, 69-71 ff. 

Nicolai, xxxvi. 

Niesky, xv. 

Novalis, xxxviii, 87 & note. 

Okely, 85 & note. 

Old age, xlvi, 49, 89-103. 

Qman, John, xviii note 9, 
167. 

Organ, of the spirit, 17, 19- 
20, 138-139, 145-147; or- 
gan and symbol, 19-20, 
ate see also “Sym- 

re 


Orthodoxy, 161-162. 

Outwardness, 11,15; see “In- 
wardness”. 

Pantheism, xxxii, xlviii- 
xlix, 156-157. 

Pascendi gregis, 1, 169. 

Pedagogy, see “Education”’. 

Perfection, 48 & note, 87-88. 

Philistinism, xxxvi-xxxvill, 
50-53 ff., 61 ff. 

Philology, xix, lvii, 131. 

Philosophy, xxvi-xxvii, 120, 
134-135 ff, 153. See also 
“Schleiermacher’”’.. 

Physics, 142-143. 

Pietists, see ‘““Moravians”. 

Plato, liv, 131-132, 133-134. 

Politics, lvi-lvii, 148-149 & 
note. 

Pius 

Polytheism, 156-157. 

Practice, 33, 36; and theory, 
24, 28, 42, 149. See also 
“Contemplation”. 

Preaching, XVIlI-xix, 
XXXVili-xxxix, lv-lvi, 130. 

See also “Schleiermacher”. 

Present age, see ‘“Philistin- 


9 


Priest, 1; and philosopher, 
ee 


Progress, xliii-xlix, 50 ff., 
61-62; in religion, 156-157. 

Protestantism, xii ff., xlv 
tf.,;.” 162¢2%)* » see alao 
“Church’”’, 

Prussia, Iv-lvii, 148-149, 

XXXVI. 

Puritanism, xii, xxi- xxii. 

Rationalism, xiii, xv, xix-xx, 
XXii, XXV-XXX, XXXVi, 
xIvi-xlviii, 30 ff., 132; 
136, 159-164. 

Reality, xix-xx, xxxii, xliv, 
xIvii, 16-17, 22, 30, 82, 
121-123, 129, 135-139 ff. 

Reason, xxvi-xxx, 30; rela- 
tion to nature, 138-139, 
145-146. 


INDEX 175 


Receptivity, xliii, xlix, 26 
ff., 37-39, 75-78 ff.; 164- 
165; see also “Activity”, 
and “Love”. 

Reconciliation, religious, 156. 

Redemption, lii, 156-157. 

Reformed Church, | see 
“Church”, 

Relativism, 137-139. 
Religion, xvili, xxxix, lviii- 
lix, 117, 127-128, 149 ff.; 
philosophy of, *xlviii- liii, 
130 ff.; see also “Educa- 
tion’, “Emotion”, “Eth- 
ics’, “Experience”, “Nat- 
ural religion’. “Theology”, 
etc. 
Religions, 
155-157. 

Renunciation, 89 ff. 

Romanticism, Xi, Xiii-xiv, 
XX1i-xxv, XXX-XXX1, 
XRRV-KXKVIIL ff) xxxv, 
liii-liv, Iviii-lx, 12, 63-68, 
91, 95-96, 100-103, 124-128, 
164-165; in Germany, 
XXili-xxv; the ‘“romantc 
school”’, XXXViUi-XXXVIIi. 

Rousseau, XXVI-XXVIi. 

Salvation, XV-xXvi, Xvili, 22- 
25, 163-165. 

Saimmtliche Werke, Schleier- 
macher’s, 130, 167. 

Santayana, George, 136 note 


historic, — 1li-l1i, 


Schelling, xxi, xxviii, 128, 
138-139. 

Schlegel, Friedrich, xxi, 
XXVili, xxxvii-xl, liv, 35 
& note, 40 & note, 86 & 
note, 94 & note, 130-131, 
132. 

Schleiermacher, his family, 
X1i-XVil ; education of, xv- 
ex1> personal development 
of, xxxiii-xxxv, liv ff., 
28- AG970-88.1115..123- 132: 
public career of, lv-lviii, 


130-131, 149-150; develop- 


ment of his philosophical 
system, xix-xxi, Xxxxi- 
XxXxii, XXXvili-xli, Ivi-lviil, 
115-149; complete works 
of, ‘xoxo unoteps baG,a.107 
early manuscripts, of, 
XXxXi-xxxiii, 115-123; au- 
tobiographical sections of 
the Soliloquies, 28-48, 70- 
88. For the discussion of 
individual published works, 
see italicized German 
titles. 

Schlobitten, xxxiv, 74 & 
note, 124. 

Schools, see “Education”. 

Schopenhauer, 55 & note, 
136 & note. 

Science, xxiii, xlvii, xlix, 
40 & note 38, 76, 127, 13v 
& note, 142-143; method & 
philosophy of, xix-xx1, 136 
& note, 142- 143, 143-147. 
See also “System”. 

Self, 5-6, 13-15, 19, 21-22, 
DxO5 70-72; self- analysis, 
13-15, Bio 26-28 ff.; 
self-consciousness, 27-34, 
38 ff., 102-103; self-de- 
velopment & cultivation, 
38: ££. ,535-60,.67../0-75i45-% 
Ideal self, 5-6, 23-25, 
70-72. See also “Spirit”. 

Senses, 92-94; see also “Out- 
wardness”’. 

Sensitiveness, 30-32 ff., 42 
& note; see also “Recep- 
tivity”. 

Sin, 6 & note, 50 & note, 144, 
163-164. 

Sittenlehre, | Schleiermach- 
er’s, 134, 142-149, 167. 

Slavery. 14-15, 70-73; ne- 
gro, 54. 

Society, xliv, 54-60, 109, 146- 
149; spiritual, see “Com- 
munity”. See also “State’’. 

Soliloquies, | Schleiermach- 
er’s, see “Monologen”. 


176 SCHLEIERMACHER’S SOLILOQUIES 


Speeches on Religion, 


Schleiermacher’s, see. 


“Uber die Religion”. 

Spinoza, xxxii, 71 & note, 
119-123, 133-134. 

Spirit, xlii, xlviii-xlix, 21, 
24-25, 53 ff., 90-94, 128, 
138-140, 145-146; its rela- 
tion to the world, 16-17, 
82-83, 105-106. See also 
“Organ” and “Symbol”. 

State, xliv, lvi, 58-59, 146- 
149, 

Stolpe, liv, 131-132. 

Strassburg, xxxvi. 

Strauss, David F., 4 & note, 
160 & note. 

Summum bonum, xxxi- 
xxxii, 116-117, 132-134, 
145-148. 

Supernaturalism, see “Nat- 
uralism”. 

Symbol, intellectual, 119-120 
ff.; theological, 161-164; 
of the spirit, see “Organ”. 

System, idea of, xix-xxi; 
philosophic, 130-149; ethi- 
cal, 132-134, 145-149. 

Theology, xvii-xix, xxv, 
XXvii, xxxil, xlvii-l ff., 
Ivii-lviii, 24-25, 69-70, 117, 
127, 137, 140-141, 149-165. 

Theory, and practice, see 
“Practice”. 

Thought, 23-25, 134-142. 
See also “Being”. 

Tieck, Ludwig, xxxviii. 

Time, 10-11, 12-15, 22-23, 
25, 61-62, 90-91 ff. 

Totality, xx, xlix, 137, 140- 
141, 156. 


Truth, 135-136. See also 
“Knowledge”, “Certainty”, 
& “Science”. 

Uber die Religion, Schleier 
macher’s Reden, xi, 
XXXVIli-XxXxXix, xl vi-liii, 
127-128, 167. 

Unconditioned, 121-123. 

Universal, and individual, see 
“Individuality”’. 

Universe, xxxii, xlix, lili, 
16-18, 127, 137, 140-141, 
156, 160-161, 163. 

Utilitarianism, xlviii. 

Variety, of goods, xxii, 
XXXili-xxv, lili, Ilviii-lx, 
31-32, 56-57 ff., 145-146, 
165. 

Veit, Dorothea, liv. 

Virgin birth, 160. 

Virtue, 29, 132-133, 145-148. 

Von Willich, E., 3 note, 169. 

Weihnachtsfeier, Schleier- 
macher’s, 131, 160 & note, 
168. 

Weimar, xxxvi. 

Will, 19-20, 57-58, 71-72 ff., 
117-119, 141 & note. See 
also “Practice”. 

Wolf, F. A., xix. 

Woman, 60 note, 80 & note. 

World, xlii, 26, 49-68, 98- 
103, 137, 163; as mirror of 
the spirit, 10, 16-17; re- 
generation of the world, 
61-68. See also “Uni- 
verse”. 

Youth, xlvi, 49, 74, 89-103; 
eternal, 94 & note. 





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